Did the CRTC pass a law stating that when a station is off the air it still has to stay on the air with bars and lines or something??
I only remember snow when the cable itself itself went out.
That was YEARS ago.
Long before late night infomercials, I still only remember the bars and lines, not the late night "snow" on the screen.

RadioActive wrote:

I don't recall hearing of such a rule, but I can say that most of the stations I remember signing off may have run colour bars and tone for a few minutes and then shut down the signal altogether. That's how I got all those great DX stations from places like Texas and Colorado. Would not have been possible if the signals were being blocked by a local station.

It helped that I worked a lot of late shifts in those days, so being up at 2 AM was not unusual. 

Today, I even wonder if its necessary for broadcast TV stations to stay on 24 hours a day. With streaming, DVDs, YouTube and more, the choices are plentiful. Not sure who's watching after 2 in the morning these days.

The as seen on TV audience is always there. You might want to drop by one of those as seen on TV type stores and ask them. They'll tell you it's not dead...then again they make their living selling the stuff you see on TV, so who really knows?

All nighters in the area...   CKNX TV 8, CKVR TV3 and CHEX 12....   by the 70s CKVR and CHEX also had Rebroadcast / Translators of their primarily licence (not sure about CKNX?). They would all go into 24 hour mode during the summer months to capture the late night viewers who would trek up to the cottage for the weekend or vacation.

Radiowiz wrote:

Did the CRTC pass a law stating that when a station is off the air it still has to stay on the air with bars and lines or something??
I only remember snow when the cable itself itself went out.
That was YEARS ago.
Long before late night infomercials, I still only remember the bars and lines, not the late night "snow" on the screen.

After the National Anthem played, the test pattern might be shown for a minute or two, then comes the snow. CBLT always signed off no later than 1AM in the 80's. With the help of my parent's rotor turned east, CBS5 from Syracuse had a fuzzy but watchable picture. Turning west brought in a snowy but still viewable picture from WEWS ABC5 Cleveland.  Today in the digital world, the Syracuse and Cleveland stations operate on ch 15, as does CHCH here.

when I was a tween age kid, around 11 12 etc I begged my parents to let me stay up and watch the Friday night mystery movie during the summer holidays in Vancouver.
The movie started at 11p and went til 1 am.
They agreed and I loved staying up to watch some of the old Sherlock Holmes movies as well as The Saint and others.
Sometimes my mother would sit in for a while and also make us some tea and toast.
After the movie I always stayed to watch the national anthem video, then the TV turn to snow.
That made for some happy childhood memories.


 

Ah yes, the old Indian Head Test Pattern. 

I wonder how that would go over today? I chose it for its historical signifiance and as a tribute to the days when TV was only black and white. It was one of the first things I ever saw on television as a child. At the time, I had no idea what it was for. I only knew it was on TV, so it must be good!

Last edited by RadioActive (April 5, 2026 9:47 pm)

I discovered a few things about the original test pattern and what it was used for. The Indian Head was used for the setting of brightness and contrast controls. The large dark circle was used for adjusting height. The four corner circles with numbers was to check focus of the beam at edges. The shaded part pointed to the centre 30 circle was used to check amplitude distortion in the receiver. The numbers in the inner circle indicates the number of lines. The bars below the inner circle are used to check low frequency response. The lighter shaded wedge pointed to the centre 30 circle was to check vertical resolution. The dotted lines was for checking high frequency over compensation. All I know is that when the test appeared on ch 2 on Saturday mornings after patiently waiting 20 minutes for the tubes to warm up. I knew Felix The Cat would be starting very soon.

RadioActive wrote:

mace wrote:

All I know is that when the test appeared on ch 2 on Saturday mornings after patiently waiting 20 minutes for the tubes to warm up. I knew Felix The Cat would be starting very soon.

Felix was apparently a big hit on what was then WGR-TV.



And he has another claim to fame - Felix was the very first image ever shown on TV.

 
And if you’re interested, you can see the original broadcast Felix figure, shown here, at Moses Znaimer’s MZTV museum in Toronto. I was working at Citytv when he got it and he was pretty happy about it! Go check it out plus a great collection of televisions and related tv paraphernalia.

When I was a kid, we had only one channel. CKNX ch 8.
Before they signed off every night, they had an old man's voice reading a passage from the Bible. You couldn't see his face. Just his bony old hands holding the Bible. I always thought it was kind of creepy or scary.