A Bit of OTA Nostalgia

[reidw]

For the younger people here you probably aren't aware of how different local TV is today from before. When I was growing up all of the local stations had their own programming beyond the news. We could all identify a station by its local personalities. It wasn't just the news. The three Buffalo stations in particular served their community very well but here in S. Ontario ,CFTO, CHCH, and even CBLT all did their bit. The change to me is symbolised by two things:
- No station even bothers identifying itself by its call letters anymore. Their local identity which used to be announced with pride between programs no longer seems relevant.
- Stations never sign on/off. Gone are the "Good morning this is ..." and the playing of the National Anthems (both the Canadian and American in some cases on the Buffalo stations by the way).

In short local OTA stations have very little identity or connection to their audience any more. Telethons are one of the last ways they connect. Otherwise, they have become almost faceless and nothing more than repeaters for their networks. Something significant has been lost and I'm not sure what exactly, if anything, has been gained.

[nbound-au]

We had local stations the way you described here in australia up until the early nineties. When due to organisational changes I wont go into here; they were scrapped, but we got all the same programming as the cities. At the beginning they still retained their regional news services, but after a while they began cutting them completely and it got to the point that the government mandates a minimum amount (still not much) of local contect (ie. news) must be shown over a certain period. Stations here are a callsign - never original transmitter name since the above changes. Or they use their on-air name only. There are no sign-ons or sign-offs since the mid 90s either, all stations are now 24hr. (excluding the national broadcasters' (ABC) kids channel - for obvious reasons)

[JamesK]

I certainly remember those days. Back then, anyone watching Irv Weinstein doing the news on WKBW would conclude Buffalo was full of arsonists. ;-)

Back then, most stations were started by local owners and then affiliated with networks, sometimes even more than one network. Also, in the early days, it wasn't possible to have live networks, as the telecommunications network wasn't there to support it. IIRC, in Canada, it was Global that first went to network TV, with no local production or identity for the stations. Of course sign on/sign off ended with 24 hour operation.

[reidw]

@jamesk: I often used to joke that Irv probably went out at 10 PM and lit a fire with his Zippo lighter on those nights when there wasn't a real fire to report.

The fact that a station went 24/7 didn't actually mean they couldn't have continued with the practice of identifying themselves/giving their output power/transmitter locations/playing the anthems etc. It could still have been done once every 24 hours. They obviously chose not to.

You are correct about Global. It was the first to be a network only without individually identifiable stations. I think I only heard the Global Call letters once or twice (Uxbridge).

Speaking of Global, do you remember "Night Walk/Ride"? Every night Global ran a program consisting of having a camerman either ride or walk through Toronto's deserted streets in the middle of the night while soft music played in the background. It filled in their schedule from about 3:30 - 5:00 AM. As stupid as this sounds it became quite a hit with the night owls. Once in a while the cameraman would go into an all night restaurant and wander up and down the aisles. I'll never forget the looks he got from some of the patrons at Fran's on College one morning. That was true local TV.

[classicsat]

I came across NightRide/Night Walk. Retronontario has some up on Youtube. From the impressions of what is there, it was taped late evening 10/11/midnight, just after the theaters let out, but before the bars. from what I see.

My memories are of CKNX before Baton basically made CKNX a full rebroadcaster of CFPL, with what was left of CKNX a news beaurau for CFPL.
At least was they had a local Christmas special which aired after the 6PM news on Christmas eve, which was essentially the station family Christmas party aired live on TV. They (I think with/from CFPL), had this show with a CW band covering the popular songs of the day, having some fun with it. CKNX had a garish, but typical for the day news set, including orange blazers (IIRC).

CKCO Kitchener had this man-on-the-street trivia program, plus I think ran the regional franchise for Romper Room, and Bowling For Dollars.

[Wayne]

CKCO also had Big Al showing the Flintstones at lunchtime. CFTO had Uncle Bobby. CHCH had Tiny Talent Time with Bill Lawrence, who was also the weatherman. WKBW had Commander Tom. Chuck the Security Guard doing the all night show on Channel 47.

I remember these things fondly, like the "O Canada" video shown at signoff with the Snowbirds and Greg Joy doing the High Jump at the 76 Olympics.

Why did local programming go away? Did it become too expensive, or did people lose interest in this type of programming and prefer more professional network content, especially in the days with dozens or hundreds of channels that cater to very specific audiences.

Note that this has also happened in radio as well as more and more you get centralized content, particularly at night - Q107 broadcasts shows from the likes of Alice Cooper, Ronnie Wood, etc.

Here is a link to a blog posting recalling some of the overnight stuff http://aseductivefable.blogspot.ca/2...ity-guard.html

[Dave Loudin]

I think two, maybe three, factors contributed to the change in broadcasting from then until now:

1) technology is much more reliable, and overall less expensive,

2) people are expensive, and maybe

3) ownership has been greatly consolidated.

Automation and control/monitoring from afar killed the signoff/on. Since you don't have to pay a person to slap on an informercial, relay a network news show, or run a syndicated show, why not leave the carrier on to get a few more bucks?

The people expenses are probably what killed off local shows for network content. Given the interrelationships and cross-ownerships between programming producers, broadcast networks, and local stations, the true cost of syndicated shows to local stations is probably less than it used to be.

[mrvanwinkles]

I can still remember, as a child, watching Walter Cronkite and Roger Mudd do the CBS Evening news, Ch 7 WWNY-TV Watertown NY watching from Kingston, Ontario Canada.

Now those were Newscasts.

That must have been the 1970's.

I still like the CBS news today.

Nice to see Charlie Rose on there once in a while.

And Walter Cronkite doing special CBS coverage of the Astronauts trips to the moon. Apollo missions ?

Think I can also still remember some Vietnam War coverage too - still going on.

What voices - those guys . What newscasts.

And "Hail the Sunshine / Age of Aquarius" being sung as the station came on the air .

Classics.

[reidw]

Let's also fondly remember:
- The Old Professor: CFTO
- Uncle Jerry's Club (Children's Talent Show Sunday morning): WBEN (now WIVB)
- Captain Andy and Popeye Cartoons: CHCH
- Captain Mike (?) and Buttons the Cabin Boy (a Marionette): WBEN
- Commander Tom: WKBW
- Local Romper Room: WGR (no Z back then)
- Razzle Dazzle with Michelle Finney (yum), Al Hamel and Howard the Turtle: CBLT (sort of network but locally oriented)
- Noon time Flintstone reruns ad nauseum: CFTO

Most of these were on between 4:00 and 6:00 in the afternoon. Those hours were reserved for kids' programming on most locals in the Toronto/Buffalo area. These were shows totally produced by the local station rather than a network. Some were corny. All were in hindsight definitely low budget. However they all connected with the local audience. They gave each station a distinct identity. Most of the people became local celebrities who appeared at charity and other events in their area. Aside from a few news readers and reproters who have developed followings, there are very few people around like that today. It has all become impersonal.

e.g. Some of you may not be aware that just about every CTV station in Canada uses almost the same music to introduce their local news. The identity is corporate/national rather than local.

[lithOTA]

There still are a few stations down here that do those things- WGN in Chicago certainly does. But among the major network affiliates, the local news programs are the only original programming. Major public television stations, and some of the independents like Wiegel Communications, are the only ones that do the "hometown" thing any more.
And it's not just the call letters that they are neglecting- many stations that have the same channel number on all of the local cable systems are using that number instead of thier virtual channel number. For example, Fox 32 in Chicago is on Channel 12 on all of the cable systems, so they NEVER use the 32, but they will say "we're on Cable 12!"

[El Gran Chico]

Growing up in London ON, we used to get the Detroit and Cleveland stations albeit not OTA but from McLean-Hunter Cable TV.

WJBK had Sir Graves Ghastly hosting horror movies

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Graves_Ghastly

WXYZ had the 4 o'clock movie, which frequently featured Monster Week (which effective put after school road hockey games on hiatus )

WUAB was like a real-life SCTV where the same 2 or 3 guys would do everything - host the kids show, read the news, host the "prize" movie (where they'd interrupt the film for a contest, usually a trivia contest to name a clip from a movie and caller-number-whatever would win something from a sponsor)

We also saw the CHCH and CKCO. I remember Big Al on CKCO coming on midway through the Flintstones to announce the birthday girls and boys. Somehow our family always forgot to send ours in.

[rmchahn]

In those days the networks had, for lack of a better word, "respect" for their local affiliates. So during nationally televised sporting events, at the top of the hour the announcer would say "Let's pause for station identification" and the local station would pipe in and state their call letters. Haven't seen this for many years.

[Wayne]

This was required at one time:

Per the FCC, U.S. radio and television stations are required to identify themselves:

At the beginning and ending of each time of operation, and
Hourly, as close to the hour as feasible, at a natural break in program offerings.[2]
Some stations, especially television stations and college radio stations, identify themselves at or near every half-hour, though only once per hour is required.

At one time, the FCC gave specific guidelines for how close to the top of the hour stations were expected to be:

"within 2 minutes" for normal scheduled programming
"within 5 minutes" for unrehearsed programming with logical breaks, such as sporting events and parades
"as close as possible" for programming that had no definite break on the hour, such as speeches and classical music performances lasting longer than an hour; broadcasters were not expected to interrupt legitimate programming for a station ID.
The advent of automated broadcast equipment has made it much easier for broadcasters to ensure compliance with identification rules. Many television stations and some radio stations have their identifications pre-recorded or programmed to display automatically at the appropriate times. Stations that use live announcers for legal ID’s usually post a sign in their studios with the official and correct identification announcement printed on it so that announcers are always reminded of how the legal ID must be expressed. Some radio stations choose to run their legal ID sandwiched between two commercials in a stop set (commercial break) that is close to the top of the hour.

FCC regulations dictate that stations only need to include their call sign and city of license in their legal ID (see below), although some stations, as a common courtesy, include detailed information in their "sign-on" and "sign-off" ID's; this additional information can include the name of the station's owner and/or license holder, the location of its transmitter, and its operating power

[Classof83]

I still see call letters being used extensively for US affiliates. WWJ-TV in Detroit always does an ID at the top of each hour for sports broadcasts. And stations like KIRO in Seattle do the location of its transmitter / repeater, and its operating power, which is nice to see.

[Goldielover]

Razzle Dazzle was shown across Canada on CBC, not just in Ontario. I remember watching it on CBUT in Vancouver. I particularly enjoyed the Forest Rangers segments, and was very happy when they moved to half hour shows. CBUT was the only channel we got. My parents refused to put up a roof top antenna, so all we had were the old rabbit ears.