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WickedWenchie@reddit

Everytime I see this, I immediately think of Poltergeist. Every. Single. Time.

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AshDogBucket@reddit

The national anthem? I've never heard of this

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mjc4y@reddit

It’s true. Images of waving flags, eagles, the whole deal.

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Affectionate-Cut4828@reddit

They did it on Canadian TV too. But it was just the flag and the Canadian anthem. The joy of growing up on the border. After like 9pm Canadian TV was uncensored.

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Stayed in a cabin on moose head lake in Maine as a kid and it was really rainy and shitty out so we all just hung around the cabin and we were so close to Canada they had the wonder years in French on TV. Besides my Grandmother's chili Mac rotini or ronzoni it was basically the highlight of the day besides cards and ghost stories. As a ten year old boy, I thought French-speaking Wendy Cooper was even cuter.

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Cerebral-Knievel-1@reddit

Jet fly overs... getting a patriotic boner just thinking about it.

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Sidetrackbob@reddit

And the Indian head with the weird compass rose weathervane looking contraption. Remember it clearly from my days as a little dude.

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lifeat24fps@reddit

I think only my very local UHF channel did this. But this stopped in the mid-80s when regulations allowed for infomercials.

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Matt-J-McCormack@reddit

I’m old enough that the only reliable way to see boobs was to scan the TV guide (Radio Times) and make a mental note of anything flagged for nudity.

My 14 year old self would like to take this opportunity to thank Under Siege, Nuns on the Run and all of Channel Four.

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rjcpl@reddit

When we were stationed in Germany we got a few British channels via satellite. I remember one of them around midnight just had topless girls playing with a beach ball.

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REDDITSHITLORD@reddit

I mean, yeah, from the antenna, but if you got cable?? Midnight was when all the SOFTCORE PORN came on, so being an enterprising latchkey kid, you'd slip down and pop in a blank VHS tape and then you'd simply need make sure you ejected the tape before anyone got up.

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GalaxyRedRanger@reddit

Did you actually do this or you wish you had done this? Because in reality, I think my parents would have heard the loud ass tape go into the machine and then later eject.

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REDDITSHITLORD@reddit

Yeah, but the TV was on a different floor from the bedrooms. The only thing thy'd hear were the stairs, and since that was also the floor with the bathroom, it made sense for someone to be on them at night.

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red286@reddit

As a Canadian, the weirdest part about this was that only the American stations did that.

Canadian stations would either repeat their daytime broadcast or else just show 5 straight hours of infomercials, but most US stations would go off-air either at 12 or 1am. They'd play the national anthem while showing images and video clips of Americana. It was so kitschy to me.

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mousicle@reddit

Anyone else remember when cable tv channels would just repeat the same 12 or 8 hour block of programs 2 or 3 times a day instead of having varied content all day?

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AnswerGuy301@reddit

I dimly remember when the independent UHF channels still did. I don't believe the network affiliate VHF channels were generally doing that in the '80s.

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unicorn-beard@reddit

I remember stations going to the beeeeep and color thing but don’t ever recall the national anthem

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GalaxyRedRanger@reddit

You can see videos of it on YouTube. They just played it in the background when the TV announcer was saying something like, “This concludes another broadcast day…” I think most of these announcements were like a minute long or less. So unless you were watching at that exact minute, you wouldn’t have heard the anthem.

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burnitdwn@reddit

We mostly had infomercials on most stations, but some stations left the test pattern or snow on. I don't recall them playing the anthem, but i would not doubt or contest it at all.

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BigPoppaStrahd@reddit

I’ve never experienced it myself, but I’d see it happen on sitcoms

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Lil_Brown_Bat@reddit

Right? Like they showed it happening on Happy Days. A show set in the 50s. It happened, but most of us here aren't old enough for it.

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GalaxyRedRanger@reddit

I definitely remember seeing the sign off. I had my own TV in my bedroom at that point. So this would have been late 80s. It definitely wasn’t at 12am though. The sign off by then must have been like 2 or 3 in the morning. I’d guess that I only saw it because I stayed up late to watch SNL and whatever came after. I just remember thinking I was up WAY too late.

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IceSmiley@reddit

No? Not in America, that was true of boomers though

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GalaxyRedRanger@reddit

Yeah. This was definitely still happening in the 80s and maybe 90s? There’s videos of stations signing off on YouTube. Although I don’t remember when it stopped.

And it couldn’t have been the same for every TV station because clearly SNL and Friday Night Videos were on past midnight. In fact, I was thinking that sign off was more like 1 or 2am. Maybe the sign off kept getting pushed back until it disappeared?

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HopelesslyHuman@reddit

This absolutely was still happening when we were children.

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FarmerMom1943@reddit

I don’t remember the national anthem but I do remember some stations having static late at night.

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dka2012@reddit

Haven’t you ever seen Poltergeist?!?

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StillhasaWiiU@reddit

What are young people suppose to do with this information?

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harlembornnbred@reddit

I was super young but I remember channels going off the air at night. Not the major networks but local channels would go off and either be static or the emergency broadcast. I was a night owl and would sit up till the sunrise so I saw this frequently. Then they started airing infomercials and paid programming and would be on all night

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silversunshinestares@reddit

I vividly remember, back when Penn Jillette was the on-air announcer for Comedy Central, at the end of the programming day he’d be like “…then at 1:00 and 1:30 it’s The Kids in the Hall, after that — GO TO BED!!”

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Fabulous-South-9551@reddit

Was this a regional thing? I know this happened prior to the 80s but I don’t recall seeing this happen myself. Maybe I never noticed because it was past my bedtime.

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spaceporter@reddit

I can remember some channels having no nighttime content, but there were definitely channels that continued on to show three hour infomercials and other crap.

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DrewBaron80@reddit

I remember most channels played I Love Lucy reruns, westerns, or other black & white stuff that I had no interest in starting at 1 or 2 in the morning.

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MsInput@reddit

and then that's when the poltergeists would visit. It's a shame how the poltergeist visits have declined so much since 24/7 tv and infomercials

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HopelesslyHuman@reddit

Maybe it's a function of being from the boonies and local stations still doing it longer but I absolutely remember this as a thing from are least a couple of stations.

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elkniodaphs@reddit

Yeah, man. Our PBS affiliate would just take mid-day breaks. Like it wasn't even a scheduled thing, sometimes they would just go off the air. I remember one time I happened to have the TV on and tuned to the station when they came back on from static, and a voice over announced that they went off the air for a moment because, "Valerie brought in a box of kittens."

A lot of the commenters in this thread can't seem to fathom anything other than highly structured 24/7 television, which is a really odd take coming from my fellow Xennials.

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_NoleFan6@reddit

I thought that was more in the 70s, however I do remember late tv would all be “Paid Programs” in the late 80s & 90s

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Overall-Ask-8305@reddit

They did this up until the 90’s. I remember that.

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United_Cry_1084@reddit

And then came cable. My, how awesome I thought it was! Non stop tv. Staying up watching stuff I wasn’t supposed to.

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dcott44@reddit

The night I watched "The Ring" I fell asleep later while watching something else. I woke up around 3am to my TV being nothing but static and noped the fuck out. Unplugged the TV and slept on the couch.

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JeelyPiece@reddit

Someone's going to print out this meme and show it to the powers that be, who will decide that this is everything that's wrong with their country, and they'll legislate that everything will be shut down to the national anthem every night thenceforth.

It's the best for the nation 🫡

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YorkiesandSneakers@reddit

I’m that old.

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Tony_Tanna78@reddit

I remember seeing this back in the day. In fact a couple of stations in my hometown, which are affiliates of the CW and My Network TV still does on early Monday morning with the still screen of the stations' logos being used instead of the colored bars.

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FatReverend@reddit

I remember the Discovery channel doing it at 3:00 a.m.

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ant-master@reddit

I don't remember this as much, but I remember two stations sharing a channel, usually operating at the 9-9 or something similar (meaning they'd swap at 9 am and 9 pm). I used to watch a lot of VH1 since I wasn't allowed to watch MTV and everywhere we lived, they shared a station with someone else, so no music videos for me until it was practically my bedtime. I think it stopped being an issue around the time they went digital in the late 90s.

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