Ptarmigan

 Here is a video of KTRK signing off from 1983.

http://www.dailymoti...1990_shortfilms

Does anyone remember Donald Trest? He parachuted off of an antenna in a gorilla suit.

http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=1985_213607

So has anyone been watching THETUBE on 39-2?  So far some pretty good artists.  journey, robert palmer, prince, eagles, stevie nicks, sheryl crow,  etc.

I remember 39-2, The Tube. It went off the air in 2007. I do remember Channel 5 being a music video channel. The signal was not that great though. 

Here is screen cap of KTRK from 1980 at late night.

http://www.qsl.net/w...ages/801016.jpg

http://www.qsl.net/wa5iyx/tvdximg.htm

I am guessing it was station ID or might be what they displayed when they signed off.

Here is a video of 1965 KRPC-AM 950 radio signing off.

It looks slightly similar to that Dubai tower...

Yeah, it does. It would be cool if t was built. 

Whipped out a little video, stealin' internet photos, a little video from youtube.

http://www.youtube.c...u/0/jF0InneA08k

Wish local TV could be like this again. I wonder what happened to that.

Forget Carl's Jr.  Bring me In N Out!

I like In N Out. Great burgers! Carl's Jr. and Hardee's are owned by the same company. Just look at their logo.

historicaerials.com goes back to the 1960s...there was a subdivision where Greenway Plaza is now.

Cool stuff! You can see how much Houston has changed.

Channel 51's signal is spotty at best. I sometimes pick it up and other times I do not.

The maybe two times I've seen that happen this decade on 13, it was static.

I didn't know that KTRK signed-off outright in this decade. I figured that would be common in the 1970s and 1980s. If 13 went static, it probably happened in 2000 on a weekend. I did see 13 do their so-called sign off and they went to World News Now. The only station that signs off is 11 and they do it on Saturdays and Sundays around 4:00 AM. It's for 20 minutes.

No, it was running in the late 1960s when Ch 11 signed off after the Late Show (the movie they ran after the 10:00 pm news) I remember it from when I was a kid. back then Ch.11 signed off at 12:00 to 12:30 am.

The same version ran for many years. Musical version with nature scenes

Back in the early 70s when Ch 26 was KVRL they had a version with a person reciting the Lords Prayer, while an American Indian followed the narration in sign language.

Are you talking about this one? This one is from a Tulsa station in the 1970s.

If KTRK signed off, did it go static or did they use a test pattern? Same goes with any Houston television station that signed off in the 1970s to early 1990s. When I was a kid, the only station I remember seeing signing off was KUHT and they did it early enough for me to see. They would play the American anthem and go all static. 

I saw her on a vintage footage of Kuualani The Weather Girl on YouTube. Whatever happen to Kuualani The Weather Girl, who was on KHTV, now KIAH? What is her real name?

Two great icons passed today, Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett. Ed McMahon died a couple days ago. I used to like Michael Jackson before he became a freak show. I like Bad. Farrah Fawcett was a true beauty from Texas. Ed McMahon was a star in his own right despite being a sidekick. RIP to all.

I wonder who was the announcer for KTXH-TV back in the 1980s and early 1990s? I sometimes hear his voice even today.

i think the 2nd one is charles harrison

The one who says, "13 Eyewitness News is close captioned"?

Back in the 50's and 60's people worried about terrorists taking over TV stations. But now that there are so many of them, no one really cares. It mattered more back when one TV station could reach 50% of the population in a city. Now it's more like 10%.

As for hacking a station, it's been done. Back in the 80's there was a series of "Max Headroom" incidents around the country. Six places were hit -- WGN-TV/Chicago, WTTW/Chicago, WJLA/Washington, HBO, The Playboy Channel, and a cable system in Arizona.

What was done isn't that hard to do, but you have to have the right equipment and know what you're doing. And just stealing the equipment won't help you because you have to know how to use it. It's not a task for the untrained.

Broadcast signal intrusion.

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

The Max Headroom incident was in Chicago on WTTW and WGN in 1987. The WJLA was a picture of a man and woman, but the station claimed it was from a promo for Oprah.

You wouldn't believe how many threats Wayne Dolcefino gets. Investigative teams at other stations get their share as well, but Dolcefino is the local king. His attitude is that it shows he's doing his job.

The joke at KTRK is that if Dolcefino ever turns up murdered, police would have to use the Astrodome to hold all the people with a reason for wanting him dead.

At one time, a TV news department only generated threats of lawsuits. Now it's lawsuits, death threats and bomb threats. They also run any "unusual or odd looking mail" through special scanners before anything gets opened.

The late Ray Miller of KPRC TV told his reporters they weren't doing their job if they weren't threatened with a lawsuit at least once a week.

I am not surprised that Wayne Dolcefino gets a lot of death threats for his reports. He made a lot of enemies doing that.

Did anyone in their area watch TV to see the station turn off the analog for good?

How many days has it been that we've had temps in the upper 90's? Also, I can't remember our last rain and none is in the forecast for the foreseeable future. How far behind are we on rainfall?

I guess the saving grace is that the humidity has been running on the lower end at 40% +/-.

Anybody remember the summer of '79 or 80 when it was so hot that the roads started buckling?

I hate this hot weather too. We need RAID to get rid of this high pressure ridge. It is like a cockroach, it keeps coming back. The summer of 1980 was very hot and also Hurricane Allen made landfall in South Texas. It almost made landfall as a Category 5.

Hurricane Carla was a very large hurricane, larger than Katrina and almost as large as Ike.

Who did the voices for KTRK-TV for this one:

And this one, there are two different ones (the one who says it is tonight's rebroadcast and the other who says 13 Eyewitness News is close captioned):

The other one, two different ones (the one who announces about the Marathon and the KTRK information for sign-off)

I can confirm that the rumor lived on until at least 1989. That year, I was a seventh grader at Holub Middle School in Alief and remember hearing tales of an ultra-violent gang in the area that called themselves the Smurfs. I thought it was a stupid name, but I didn't question the necessity of my being deathly afraid of them.

Interesting. Didn't know the Smurf rumor lasted until 1989. I thought it ended in 1983. I know it peaked that time.

I have wondered where Houston TV stations broadcasted before the Missouri City Antenna Farms were built. I believe they were built in the 1980s. I know one of the collapsed killing seven people in 1982, which is Senior Road Tower, which was for KTXH-TV.