Was anyone else scared of TV sign-offs, test patterns, etc. as a child?

I'm not sure why, but I was. When the national anthem came on, I ran to hide. I knew the test pattern and noise was coming. Same for 'Technical Difficulties, please stand by'

I'm 30 years old, and still get a little apprehensive. Not that stations go off the air anymore, but whatever.

When one saw that flash on the screen something really significant had happened. People nationwide suddenly froze and all attention was focused upon their TV sets, waiting to find out what the hell was going on.

Now a special report is just another typical hourly segment. Oh, look. O. J. is speeding down the road at 20mph in his Bronco . Better pay attention!

Special reports used to be "Reagan Got Shot", or "The Freakin' Shuttle Exploded" or "The Berlin Wall Came Down"

Now it's just drivel. Fox News has turned the special report into a farce.

the twist is, when it said "Please Stand By"...

... I got up and stood next to the set.

Really. You can't make this stuff up.

I have to mute the tv immediately whenever the emergency broadcast test thing comes on. I think they changed the tone of it in recent years, it's not quite as scary but it still gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Who knows why

first of all, it comes out of nowhere, usually at like 2 am on a thursday night, BANG! horrible awful scary loud noise.
even as an adult, it gives me the jitters.

You know, you can go on Youtube and relive the terror...

One from a childhood station: KFSM (CBS) Channel 5 from Fort Smith, AR

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Lf4hJeIOd8

Capped off with a nice Moog synthesizer arrangement of the National Anthem... Maximum Creepitude..

but you *know* that I'm going to have to spend the rest of the evening watching these damn things!

and then I won't be able to sleep tonight :scared:

red screen severe weather alerts on the weather channel...those scared me SHITLESS.

I recall feeling like it was the end of the world, somehow.

In fact, when I was... I dunno, maybe 8, I had a dream that the local news began with, "There's no use planting a garden anymore. The Earth is dead."

:scared:



Hmmmm... child-like manifestation of early '60s fear of nuclear war, perhaps? :shrug:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKs-bTL-pRg

:P

I don't remember seeing that when it ran — probably because it ran only once.

But we had freakin' "duck and cover" drills at school, and at the peak of the Cuban Missile Crisis they sent us home. I remember walking in front of the school and seeing a small airplane flying over, one that looked to me like an old Army reconnaissance plane, an L-19 Bird Dog — which was reasonable, since Ft. Ord and Fritsche Field were about 15 miles away.

We didn't know what was going on, of course (I was in first grade), but I remember sensing that the adults were scared. And when you're that age and adults are scared, you're scared.

bend over and kiss your ass goodbye...I don't remember doing them in school but it could have had something to do with the cold war ending the same year I entered school

You young'uns don't know what fear IS. :P

the only thing we had to fear was The Clenis!

The Russians...Pffft!

In Soviet Union, penis sucks you.

now I must go back to watching test patterns on youtube...lol

It has a little song in it.

We had a book about how to build a fallout shelter out of various things.

All the way from a simple card table in the basement to cement blocks.

That book scared me because we didn't have a basement.

I was just old enough to know something was going on but not what was going on.

I am glad for that.

I still remember one of my worst childhood nightmares: Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant squaring off with nuclear weapons. I remember thinking of the nuclear missile as being this absolutely massive shining metal thing that was hundreds of feet high - and Andre the Giant was going to use it to destroy Hulk Hogan and America. I was also quite convinced that at any moment there would be russian tanks and/or paratroopers outside my elementary school.... obviously the place they'd attack.

on my front lawn. :)

russian brats. It was also when I was a kid that it was decided, almost over night, that Russia was now our friend, and all of their people weren't inherently evil. I was pleased about that, but it was kind of something strange for a kid to wrap his head around who'd previously believed that just being from Russia made someone completely evil - it was a country of murderous thugs who marched around all day, built missiles and submarines, and would kill an American the first chance they got. I also think that was around the time I stopped trusting the government and the news - I know I stopped trusting the news at a pretty early age when they were constantly reporting that palestinian kids on dirt streets with rocks were villains for getting shot buy guys in guard towers with helmets and machine guns - who were, I was told, oppressed, and heros.

and then finally the ant race.

I'd get up early on a Saturday morning to watch cartoons, and there'd be that damned rainbow screen. I didn't know when the hell our little TV station in Sierra Vista, AZ began its broadcast day. All I knew was I wanted to watch cartoons, dammit!

Seriously, my best childhood friend and I believed that the off-air time was a show. (We were really very young!)

We also hated the show, "To Be Announced." It was some stupid grown-up show that never made any sense.

:crazy:

I'm 52, and i associate that stuff with the trst warnings that used to come on during the Cuban Missile Crisis...

some memories go deep... :scared:

The old CBS "Eye" comin' at me. :scared:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tGEhD9_UUE