If you don't know what I'm talking about, I'll tell you about it in this blog post! So sit back, relax, and enjoy my deep delve into TV Sign-Offs.
TV sign-offs vary from country to country. I'll talk about various types of international sign-offs, from the US, to Japan, to the UK, to the Phillipines, They'll all be there! Sorta.
Starting with my country, the United States. Here in the US, TV stations don't sign off like they used to before. But when they did, they had a set list of what to do at sign-off.
US Stations would usually sign off with the following...
- A Station Identification slide featuring the station's logo, and city where they are licensed to operate out of, and sometimes, some scenery of the viewing area.
- An Announcer listing information, such as the audio and visual output and transmitting power, the station's owner, copyright disclaimers, and/or a message stating that businesses can't charge people to watch said station on their TVs.
- The Star Spangled Banner (Some stations play America The Beautiful, God Bless America, God Bless the USA, etc.)
- Test Patterns, like the iconic color bars.
Nowadays, with the advent of infomercials, TV stations have stopped doing nightly sign-offs, but CBS-owned stations play the national anthem every morning at 4PM Eastern Time.
In the UK, The BBC used to have nightly sign-offs (known as closedowns) on its flagship channel BBC One, but in 1997, a few months after Martin Lambie-Nairn (RIP, BTW) redesigned the BBC Blocks logo, They started airing overnight news from the BBC World Service. BBC Two still signs off for the night.
This is how BBC signed off their channels at that time.
- A voice-over called a Continuity Announcer would give details on the next day's scheduled programming. The programming and times would also be shown on screen.
- A View of a clock ident (a station identification featuring a clock, shown live), followed by the continuity announcer saying good night.
- (BBC One only) A playing of the British national anthem "God Save the Queen" (at that time) (RIP), with the Globe spinning.
And now the UK's Ad-Supported channels of the ITV Network. Their closedowns are similar to BBC Two's, in the fact that not all stations would play GSTQ. But most ITV stations would end their broadcasts with a black screen, and a delayed-by-a-few-seconds reminder to turn off your TV set. The reasoning for this is because older TV sets were prone to igniting on fire if used for prolonged amounts of time. In my opinion, having 10 to 15 seconds of black screen and silence, just for the announcer to come and give that reminder can scare the heebie-jeebies off of people who don't expect it.
Japanese TV sign-offs, known as Closings, are pretty similar to US sign-offs in style. The greatest sign-offs from Japan are the ones from NHK. That channel's sign-offs are some of the most US-esque sign-offs in that country, with scenes from the islands, an announcer listing off technical details, and playing the national anthem, "Kimigayo", which, fun fact, is the shortest national anthem, with 11 bars and 32 hiragana characters!
Filipino TV sign-offs are also extremely well known to sign-off enthusiasts. They are similar to US sign-offs in the way that they provide technical information, but they provide a lot more information, such as the technical staff of a station, its broadcast license number, and the date of the license's expiration date. Unfortunately, The most well known network in the country, and outside of it, ABS-CBN, was shut down by the National Telecommunications Council (The equivalent of the FCC in the US) for an extremely unfair reason, relating to broadcasting license renewal. But their programming airs on other channels in the country due to them finding some loopholes in the NTC guidelines.
If I find some more examples of TV sign-offs from other countries, I'll make a Part II!
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