I got a question about the 1950's?!
Question: When T.V. first came out then or whenever it did, I was wondering, what did they show on t.v. then between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 am?
Im just asking this after i saw Back To The Future III. In the beginging when they were at the 1950's Docs house and the T.V. was showing nothin but static ( white fuzzy screen).
So my question is in the 1950's did t.v. shows or channels go off every night then come back on in the morning? It may sound confusing.
or
Did they ever show anything on T.V. late at night in the 1950s or did they show nothing at all until the morning?
Answers: When T.V. first came out then or whenever it did, I was wondering, what did they show on t.v. then between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 am?
Im just asking this after i saw Back To The Future III. In the beginging when they were at the 1950's Docs house and the T.V. was showing nothin but static ( white fuzzy screen).
So my question is in the 1950's did t.v. shows or channels go off every night then come back on in the morning? It may sound confusing.
or
Did they ever show anything on T.V. late at night in the 1950s or did they show nothing at all until the morning?
TV and Radio stations frequently signed off at 11:00 Pm or midnight and went 'dark' until around 6:00 or 7:00 am the next morning. But they didn't really turn everything off. In those days of vacuum tubes instead of solid state electronics, It took hours and hours to bring a TV or radio station down and then back up. So they left the station 'on' broadcasting just the carrier (a signal with no content) resulting in that 'snow'.
tv went off at night. - crazy to think about now huh? - even when i was growing up in the 70's, they would end their programming w/ the star spangled banner, a few video clips of some fighter jets, and then bam... static !! - nuts eh?
Yes, in those days people went to bed at night time. TV was relatively new then, only Black&White. There wasn't enough programming to keep the thing going all night. And no one dreamed there were enough veiwers anyway, especially the sponsers. At Midnight or before all the stations signed off. Remember there only were a few stations then. One station always showed a single seat jet plane flying among the clouds while a prayer was spoken. That prayer was also a poem and here it ishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gilles... , read the authors bio. The poem is several paragraphs down. The author didn't live to see a jet aircraft. But he could have flown almost as high in a Spitfire.
Things were simpler then.
They played the national anthem and actually went off the air for the night. If I remember right Captain Kangaroo came on about 7AM. I remember game shows and soap operas in the daytime but I also think that some stations actually went off the air for part of the day, maybe mid afternoon.
I remember TV programing going off the air every night. I don't remember what time it went off or came back on in the morning. They would play the Star Spangled Banner, and after that, their station's emblem would come on, or the screen would just go to static until morning.
That wasn't the worst thing about TV back then. The worst thing was that, when ever something important happened or something like a political speech was going on - all channels showed the same coverage of the event. You had to watch that, or you didn't watch TV. Not very interesting for a kid.
The stations had a sign off and showed a test pattern all night. Sometimes on weekends they ran a movie late--but by one oclock you were back to test patterns.