Network Affiliate Sign-Offs

[wpxt]

I was wondering when local channels stopped signing off at night and which local channel in the country was the first one to stop?

 

[FreddyE1977]

Not counting PBS stations (which sometimes have done this for budgetary reasons)
the most recent station in this area I can think of was WTAE-TV4 in the late 1980's.

I remember this because our cable system was still taking them over the air, and if you
tuned to Channel 4 on your cable late at night sometimes you were actually seeing WRC-TV
coming in on the skip from Washington, D.C.

 

[Markxxx]

That was always cool, in the 80s I had cable and half the time when the station signed off the cable company would forget to blank it out. It was Jones Cable in the burbs of Chicago, and when WYCC signed off you'd get WICS from Springfield. WTTW would sign off on Sundays after 2am and you could see KPLR from St Louis on the cable.

 

[azumanga]

Here in Tampa Bay, one time around the late-1980s or early-1990s, when WUSF ch.16 left the air for the night, instead of static, we got WAPT ch.16 from Jackson, MS. The cable system made no effort to insert any sort of placeholder when a station leaves the air, though our system began to add E! during the times WUSF was off the air.

 

[bpatrick]

I once had a roommate from Reidsville, GA, which gets WTLV/12
Jacksonville. On Saturdays, after WTLV had signed off, he could
pick up all-night movies on WCTI/12 New Bern, NC.

 

[KML0224]

I think this happened to me once here in New Britain, CT near Hartford. One night, after WGBY-TV (PBS) channel 57 of Springfield, MA signed off, a weak and noisy signal of channel 57 Philadelphia started coming in. This was around 1 am on a Sunday morning, if I remember right, likely around 1990. The "Smash Hits" music show with Scott Shannon was on. ???

 

[cwf1701]

In Detroit, One Christmas (1994), i turned to Channel 9 on the cable and caught the last few minutes of "its a wonderful Life" followed by the rebroadcast of WCPO 11 o'clock news. WCPO was coming in strong several hours after CBET has signed off for the night. The Signal went out just as CBET turned on its test pattern (around 5:30-6:00 AM)

 

[Cincinnati Kid]

A guy I once worked with at an area radio station told me that in the late 1960's when he was attending Ohio University in Athens, Ohio one of the stations (probably either from Columbs, Ohio or Charleston/Huntington, West Virginia) on the cable signed off and a station from Milwaukee came in. He told me the Milwaukee station was showing the movie, "Santa Claus Conquers The Martians".

 

[JeeperOne]

Here in Denver, the answer to that question is easy.....

KWGN 2 (Independent primary/NBC SECONDARY but now the CW affiliate) was the first one to sign off as it was the first station on the air in 1952

KBDI 12 (PBS) was the last one to go 24/7 (Not sure what year this practice began though)

Cheers ;D

 

[mjlarochelle]

There are apparently still some stations in Canada that sign off either once a week or nightly.

 

[bpatrick]

A guy I once worked with at an area radio station told me that in the late 1960's when he was attending Ohio University in Athens, Ohio one of the stations (probably either from Columbs, Ohio or Charleston/Huntington, West Virginia) on the cable signed off and a station from Milwaukee came in. He told me the Milwaukee station was showing the movie, "Santa Claus Conquers The Martians".

I would bet it was Columbus, since both Columbus and Milwaukee have Channels 4, 6, and 10.