Late Night and All Night Television

[James Pagan]

Greetings, everyone. Hope all are well. I've posted a new essay on my occasional film blog regarding my childhood memories of watching late night and all night television. For me, this was a truly magical time, and I'm curious what memories the rest of you have. Were late nights full of as much wonder for you as they were for me, or were you sound asleep in bed like most normal human beings?

http://deadpictures.blogspot.com/2011/12/all-night-television-pictures-in-my.html

Happy New Year!

Cordially,

James Pagan

 

[wbhist]

I think in my case, the answer to that last question would be yes. Actually, for me the wonder on such times as I was staying up at night was watching the local stations in New York City sign off one by one (the earliest being WNYC-TV 31, the latest of course being WCBS-TV 2). This was how I was able to memorize the announcers of NYC TV stations. And to see the various different "SSB" films used by each station. (Such as the 2.5-minute "Flag Evolution" film produced in 1971 by Saxton Graphic Associates, Ltd. and aired for years on WNEW-TV 5, or two different "SSB" films using the same 1963 U.S. Army Band recording - one on WPIX 11 using a stationary shot of a flag flying in the breeze and the other on WNBC-TV 4 showing the sights of various Washington, DC area landmarks, or WCBS-TV 2 running another "SSB" film - again, with DC landmarks - that was essentially exclusive to the CBS O&O's, or WABC-TV 7 going in the mid-1970's from the U.S. Navy Band "SSB" to the synthesized Moog variant, or WOR-TV 9 using the Mormon Tabernacle Choir "SSB.")

 

[gregg75]

We only had one station that stayed on late Friday and Saturday nights in Columbus, Ga. (WYEA 38) in the early 70's. They would present JOHN WAYNE THEATRE with 2 movies. The later would start around 1AM and if it was a good one, we'd stay up till 2 watching it. That was late for us.

 

[BMR]

ITV began running 24 hours around 1990 in my area. I kept my little portable B and W by the bedside with headphones so my folks didn't know I was watching TV on a school night. That also gave me the first taste of some american shows- I think import rules were relaxed overnight.

I remember seeing 'married-with children', 'alfred hitchcock presents' and 'americas top 10' as well as the american version of 'gladiators' for the first time on overnight telly.

 

[Tim L]

The one station I remember being on late every night consistently in the Cleveland area was WJW-TV 8..They would show a movie at 11:20 or 11:30, followed by a second feature around 1-1:30.

For a time in the 1980's the old WAKR-TV 23 in Akron would stay on for all night movies on Fridays and Saturday Nights..Some of which were extremely old and obscure..I remember watching one night at 3AM, "Check and Double Check" the 1930 movie with Amos 'n' Andy..Odd was the fact that Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll did the movie in Blackface..And more surprising that this would be shown anywhere, given the fact that Amos n Andy the TV show had been off TV since 1966..

 

[therealjm12]

I remember when I first got cable- 12 channels. I'd come home late and there'd be the Late (Late) show (not always a choice movie), Joe Franklin, and The 700 Club. I'd just listen to tunes.

 

[Gregg]

From my earliest memories in the NYC market, Channel 2, WCBS-TV would run all night. Looking at old TV Guides, I see this wasn't always the case. Most network affiliated stations by the early 50s would run a late movie after the news while NBC affiliates would run the Tonight Show which started with Steve Allen hosting in 1954.

At first WCBS-TV ran one movie, "The Late Show," then a second movie, "The Late Late Show" by the late 50s, going off the air around 3 or 3:30am. It wasn't till sometime in the 60s that they'd run a third movie, essentially becoming a round-the-clock TV station. However, whoever did the scheduling never bothered to make sure the last movie ended around the beginning of the broadcast day. Some nights there'd be up to an hour of the Test Pattern before the Star Spangled Banner aired, followed by the morning Sermonette and then CBS's Sunrise Semester, a college lecture.

I wonder if they thought nobody would be up at 5am, so it didn't matter if the movies timed out correctly? Or why they didn't think to run an old half-hour sitcom or other program such as Mike Wallace's "Biography" to fill in the gap? Or did everyone just figure that every station should run its test pattern for a while so the boys in engineering had a chance to make adjustments before the start of a new day?

Of course, today stations run 24/7, never running the SSB or a test pattern. But they have live news programming beginning at 4:30am in many markets and at 5am in smaller markets. So much for the theory that nobody's watching at that early hour.

One last memory. Since we just finished with the holidays, I remember when WCBS-TV every Christmas Eve ran three movies overnight into Christmas morning... the three versions of A Christmas Carol. I believe CBS Network ran services from a well-know Protestant Church someplace in the U.S. which they still do (in contrast with NBC's tradition to this day to show Midnight Mass from the Vatican). Then at 12:30 or 1am, when the network was finished, WCBS-TV would run each version of A Christmas Carol, starting with the latest, which I suppose was the Alastair Sim version from 1951, which my dad always said was his favorite. I believe there was one from the 40s and one from the 30s.


Gregg
[email protected]

 

[Bluenoser]

ITV began running 24 hours around 1990 in my area. I kept my little portable B and W by the bedside with headphones so my folks didn't know I was watching TV on a school night. That also gave me the first taste of some american shows- I think import rules were relaxed overnight.

I remember seeing 'married-with children', 'alfred hitchcock presents' and 'americas top 10' as well as the american version of 'gladiators' for the first time on overnight telly.

What region do you live in, BMR?

 

[BMR]

ITV began running 24 hours around 1990 in my area. I kept my little portable B and W by the bedside with headphones so my folks didn't know I was watching TV on a school night. That also gave me the first taste of some american shows- I think import rules were relaxed overnight.

I remember seeing 'married-with children', 'alfred hitchcock presents' and 'americas top 10' as well as the american version of 'gladiators' for the first time on overnight telly.

What region do you live in, BMR?

The Midlands of England, near Derby. We get Central ITV. I think Yorkshire ITV started 24 hours TV a bit earlier.

These days ITV is pretty much the same nationwide, and shows infomercials and TV gambling overnight

 

[FreddyE1977]

It was always something of a rite of passage here in Pittsburgh that as you approached adolescence
you would start pestering your parents to let you stay up and watch Chiller Theater with Chilly Billy Cardille.

They would run back-to-back horror flicks on Saturday nights, starting after the 11 o'clock news.
Generally much later than your parents would let you stay up and watch television. I remember
when I finally convinced them to let me stay up for it I was highly disappointed because Chilly Billy and
the comedy segues were missing (he was out sick I think), and the movie was some awful gladiator flick
from the 1950's.

 

[mbayus]

As you might read in my bio, I was a tv baby, and I still need the TV on to sleep. My Mother remembers how she and my Grandmother would stay up all night with the TV on. when I would fall asleep, and they would put me in my krib, I would cry, and they would pick me back up, and rock me untill I fell asleep again and the same thing would happen all night. This was in 1952/53, and I am assuming that the TV station was WDTV in Pittsburgh and Swingshift Theater. When I got a little older, I remember a Catholic Priest, I guess from Pittsburgh saying "In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy ghost, Amen" followed by the National Anthem, and My Grandma would turn the TV off and the next thing I knew, It was tomorrow. I guess the idea was not to wake my Dad, and my Grandfather as they were both coal miners and had to get up early for work in the morning. When I was 3 years old, we moved to Flint Michigan, because my Dad got a good job with GM, and my bedroom was near enough to the TV that I could hear WJBK, or what ever station my folks were watching as I went to sleep. Now-a-days, we have my laptop, and a nifty little DVD player softwear that inables a DVD to play untill the data on it is compleeted. The VLC media player has a neat utility that you can inable that will disable the DVD menus and just play all the files one after the other. All I need is one of those DVDs from Millcreak or some such with lots of old TV shows on it, and I and my wife are good to go.

 

[FreddyE1977]

Pittsburghers who ended up moving to Flint.
We're in a pretty small and exclusive club there
(though I eventually came back).

 

[F.M.Hertz]

The pinnacle for Late Night was most definitely "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson." Back then the celebrities seemed so much larger in stature than those of today's variety. I think that's because a lot of us had only 3 major channels to choose from until the early 80's. Where else could you find Don Rickles and Frank Sinatra steal Johnny's thunder? Or the night that Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and John Wayne just walk out from the curtain when Rickles was filling in for The King?

I used to give talks about broadcasting to high school and college students and would often be asked how I got interested in broadcasting. I would tell them that growing up in Western Pennsylvania your Friday night wasn't complete without watching Paul Long and Don Cannon deliver the News on Channel 4. Then, you had to get up off the couch, walk across the room and turn the TV set two clicks over to Channel 6 in Johnstown, (Serving Millions From High Atop The Alleghenies!) to watch Johnny Carson at 11:30. If you made it past Johnny's monologue, you had major bragging rights on your street for the weekend.

That changed in the 80s when Letterman came on after Carson. Dave's show was a lot more funnier then, especially when he did his own field pieces after the first guest was off.

Oh, for those halcyon days....

 

[KeyTimes950]

Boy, I could comment all over the place on this one.

I remember my full share of sign-offs and sign-ons. I still remember a marvelous take on the National Anthem on old WNEW-5 in New York, and "High Flight" as part of the sign-off process on KDKA-2 in Pittsburgh. There were the radio-on-TV newscasts on WOR-9 in New York and that great intro to the late movies on WCBS-2 that was shoehorned in to cable systems when WOR went off the air.

More recently, when I can't sleep, or sometimes when I should be asleep and can't settle in, there's the rebroadcasts of primetime fare on WQED-13.1 in Pittsburgh, some of the Create fare on WQED-13.2, the overnight MeTV fare on WPXI-11.2 in my home market, some of the ministry on WPCB-40.1 and its Bible Discovery Network on WPCB-40.2, and sometimes the newscasts and sometimes the movies and the early AM fare on This TV Pittsburgh, WTAE-4.2, including Mike Nelson and "Sea Hunt." (Liked the theme music, didn't care much for the plots.)

Biggest problem with modern TV: too many infomercials filling the gap between the late-night shows and whatever time in the morning the station (or cable network) comes back with regular fare.

 

[F.M.Hertz]

Boy, I could comment all over the place on this one.

I remember my full share of sign-offs and sign-ons.... "High Flight" as part of the sign-off process on KDKA-2 in Pittsburgh.

Funny you should mention that. . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgH2dZ0l-BY

Quite simply, this is one classy sign-off.

I remember that there were some panic-filled people that night (June 12, 2009) because the Penguins won the Stanley Cup. There were probably some big questions on what to do if the game went into overtime. I think I recall something coming down from the FCC saying that some of the Pittsburgh stations could have been allowed to stay on analog just in case to accomodate the post-game (in Channel 11's case), and breaking news (in the situation for Channels 2 and 4).

 

[FreddyE1977]

WPXI would not have been able to stay on analog ch. 11 because they were due to hand it over
to WPCW for a digital flash-cut at midnight. You are correct though, there would have been some
upset hockey fans if the game had been in overtime.

I watched WPXI analog leave the air. Trivia Question: Who was the last person to ever appear
on WIIC/WPXI in it's history as analog Channel 11? Answer: Penguins GM Ray Shero (they pulled the plug
in the middle of an interview)