Blow Up Your T.V.
Posted at 5:59 AM on June 8, 2009
by Dale Connelly
(25 Comments)
This coming Friday at midnight, the transition from analog to digital television broadcasting in the U.S. will be complete. Standard analog sets that faithfully carried the glory and horror of television into our homes since the technology emerged in the 1950's will no longer work without a converter box or a connection to some kind of service provider. Think of it. The end of an era!
I know. I'm exhausted from trying to think of the ends of eras.
The printed newspaper era, the General Motors-is-solvent era, the incandescent light bulb era - all of them are vanishing and I am getting to be too old and parched to squeeze out a tear for every single one. I need to retain as much moisture as possible as a reserve against the next big collapse of whatever it is that we thought would never change.
In an effort to come up with something to point to that some people might actually miss with the demise of analog television, I went to You Tube and discovered this:
Yes, even this is on You Tube. A series of test patterns.
When I was a boy, the thrill in seeing one of these was that it meant you were up so late the people at the TV station had left their posts, and had probably gone out dancing or drag racing or whatever the most glamourous people in the world did when they weren't on TV. The certainly hadn't gone home, because as far as I was concerned, their home was our home. They lived inside the box, and when the test pattern was on, they were out, doing secret, fascinating things.
The test pattern meant standard programming had ended.
Anything could happen.
And this Friday, all standard programming ends. Or at least the standard technology behind it.
So, how will you spend this landmark evening?
May I suggest that it would be delightful to spend it in the company of Iris DeMent, a singer with a musical style and family background that are pretty much the opposite of what television has become.
Radio Heartland is giving away 3 pairs of tickets to Iris's June 12th concert at the Cedar Cultural Center. Enter the drawing between now and 1 p.m. tomorrow.
Specific rules apply.
Comments (25)
Timely topic Dale. Just this weekend my teenage daughter discovered, to her horror, that when I was her age, we didn't have Jamba Juice! Or Caribou! And although she knows that we didn't have computers in the home back then, the actual impact just occurred to her (How did you find out what times the movies were?) So now she's even more convinced that I'm approximately the same age as the dinosaurs.
But despite the fact that I never win anything (Susan Lucci of drawings), I hope I'm spending Friday night listening to Iris DeMent and not waiting for my tv to blow up (reminds me of waiting for the world to end during Y2K).
You will have to play John Denver's "Blow Up Your TV" song on Friday.
thanks for the test patterns, Dale - love those and the "back in a moment, technical difficulty" signs also.
rolling with change is THE challenge i think. but yesterday i met Cynthia (of Mahtowa) at TJ's farm market and saw things that are not disappearing: friendly folks, people working with their hands, parents teaching their kids to be responsible and caring people, cute puppies, creamy Jersey milk, brats cooked on a grill served up with sarsaparilla sodas and eaten in that stiff, cold, east wind off of Lake Superior (which NEVER seems to disappear).
friday night i will be doing one of two things: waiting for Dream to drop those kids or admiring their beauty - hope it's the latter. better than any tv.
Congratulations, Sherrilee, on getting your teenage daughter to listen to your story of olden times long enough to be appalled at the horrible conditions.
We truly had it rough, eh?
And Peggy, I'd love to play "Blow Up Your T.V." by either John Denver or John Prine, though I will have to spend some time searching the library this week. Thanks for the suggestion.
"our town" was featured on northern exposure! my favorite tv show, i own all the dvds. :)
I must point out to Radio Heartlanders how famous one becomes blogging on Trial Balloon. When I introduced Barb to a friend at TJ's on Sunday, she said "You're Barb from Blackhoof!" And on we talked in glowing terms about Trial Balloon.
It was a good "old" time, indeed, Barb.
Some of our local tv stations had scheduled tower work this week to install the last of their upraded digital antennas so they could go to full power by Friday...hmmm, raining and windy and cold and not much promise in the forecast. Wonder how that is going to work?
I also want to point out tht Charlie Parr, Sneaky Pete Bauer and Colleen Myhre are singint at Rob's Mahtowa tavern this Thursday evening starting at 8. Could be worth a trip!
Good Monday all.
Thanks for the welcome nod to nostalgia on a Monday morning. I had not watched television for 10 years and then about a year ago got DirectTV, which I learned has made me ready for the grand transition.
My out of state friend had a dinner party, and they listened to old 45s... recordings by Sam Cooke, Fats Domino, Ronettes, Lloyd Price, Wanda Jackson, and so forth. Digital technology has certainly had a profound affect on the analog technologies that some of us love. I work in a highly technical job, but on my own time, I embrace old technologies. My five year old will run over after I make a photo of him to look at the image and then stop in his tracks to remind himself, "Film". The neighbor kids and my own children love to watch the original instant gratification in photography as the images of their portraits come to life in Polaroid. Something not many more children will see. Books are read as PDFs. We stream Pandora on our BlackBerries.
I would love to spend Friday evening listening to one of my favorite musicians! I'm wondering if you have the Steve Earle & Iris DeMent song "I'm Still in Love with You" in your library. I think it is on the Del McCoury and Steve Earle album The Mountain.
I remember those test paterns and now it's just continuous 24 hour boardcasting of shows that I wonder if any one is watching or some of the public stations just go blank during the middle of the night.
But people have always made their own good times and continue to do so as Barb tells us, talking about
the comunity event she attended over the weekend. A big thank you to Dale and Mike for creating this show where we can have some fun posting on Dale's blog and hearing some of our favorite music.
Speaking of Northern Exposure, I heard Iris' Our Town for the first time on that last episode ever, and loved it. I will be there Friday night.
Jill -- I too have the first 3 seasons of N. Exp. on DVD (I found first season at Half Price Books, bought it and sold it to my son to give to me for Christmas). Haven't ever been able to replace that show.
Cynthia - Famous? Get out!!
I love that Bob Frank healing song.
Sherrilee - laughed at your dinosaur comment. Nothing like one's child to shove reality in your face.
My son, like many, thinks vinyl LP's are superior to CD's. Suppose alalog tv will ever win the same notoriety over digital?
FYI - my favorite pajama top is an old Northern Exposure t-shirt that I stole from my daughter.
Donna - I have that same pajama top. Maybe we should have a slumber party.
First, regardless of artistic license, any song that mentions President Rutherford B. Hayes catches my attention.
I’d love to spend Friday evening seeing Iris DeMent. She is one of the artists I would not be aware of were it not for Radio Heartland (and The Morning Show).
However June 12 is my daughter’s 7th birthday. To mark the end of the analog era, maybe I’ll hook up rabbit ears and watch ‘over the air’ one last time after the birthday has been properly celebrated.
Wow, the missing "Jitterbug" from the "Wizard of Oz". Fun stuff!
Ah...test patterns, color bars, and the like. Early screen savers when you think about it. I used to watch them with fascination. I remember staring at the screen until I was able to see the screen waver slightly on the test patterns as the CRT guns created the image. Hey, it kept me busy and quiet for a while. My folks poke their heads downstairs, see me staring at a test pattern and not moving for minutes on end. Dad would tell me to blink occasionally or my eyes would dry out and get crusty. Of course, it was a mild form of hypnosis, which I was fascinated with as a kid...still am, actually. I see this changeover as being very similar to when cable television became the thing. This is just the next progression. But I do like to revel in nostalgia. I still have my little 12" black and white portable that my folks got for me as a kid. I guess it'll make a good paperweight now...
Analog isn't dying! What to you think a converter box does? Turns digital to analog of course!
Of course digital looks lovely, and now we have a big tv in the bedroom with the converter box too. Radioheartlanders are nothing if not adaptive!
Good morning all! Warning - long post:
OK, am I the only one who thought movies shown in the theater were on something besides film? We were about three-quarters of the way through the movie "UP" (absolutely delightful, and EXCELLENT animation, imho), when we saw an image appear on the screen that appeared to be a brown dot growing larger, than darker, then black and melting! I turned around to the projection room and saw what looked like smoke to me. I stood up and started moving people out of the theater because I couldn't see anyone attending to the problem. Suddenly there was a person in the projection room actively taking the situation in hand, literally. He was grabbing the film strip, holding it up and and looking for unburned areas to splice together. After a 20 minute delay, we were able to watch the end of the movie, and we also were reimbursed for the cost of our tickets.
But the picture of the projectionist, backlit, looking at individual images on a strip of film with little bits of burned film floating in the light, framed by a small square window - a pose I thought was a thing of the past - is stuck in my head.
Anybody have a similar experience?
Dale and Mike, any songs about going to the picture show?
TGiTH - I bet you could turn your old black and white TV into a cool looking aquarium without too much trouble. I recall there used to be directions for doing something like that to old Apple computers (the beige square ones). Might be another source hypnosis with little fishies swimming about...and it'd still be analog. ;>
I wonder if there are some things about analog TV that are better than digital TV? I guess the digital TV picture is "sharper" than the analog TV picture. I guess if the slightly less clear analog picture is prefered, one can, as Kim explains, keep an analog TV with a converter box which will convert digital transmissions into analog transmissions and this way one can still watch analog TV.
I do remember the test patterns. Our first TV came in 1956, an old Setchel Carlson (why do I remember that?) but it was many years till I got to stay up late enough to see test patterns.
Donna and Linda: I've found (thrift shops) a N. Exp. mug and a cookbook, complete with commentary from each of the characters. You can almost hear them speaking. :)
Glad to know that there are some other Northern Exposure fans out there! When the show was still being produced, I actually had a Northern Exposure party, where several friends came over to watch a new episode. Everyone brought something to share... we had Moosehead beer, sardines and saltines, jello salad and french fries. I even have a Northern Exposure Cookbook, with every dish ever mentioned in the show. Gotta get me those DVDs!
We solved the TV problem years ago and have a TV set that does nothing but play DVD's. It sure makes for a quiet life, although our chldren think we are lunatics and are out to ruin their lives. I hear there was some rain in the cities this weekend. Wonderful! I woke up on Saturday morning to 3 inches of snow. Nothing in the garden froze, strangely enough, but everything looks as though it was put in the fridge and crisped up.
Anna - Thanks for the offer. My wife's birthday is coming up and the cats would probably be fascinated by it. But we don't have a great place for it and the TV itself is pretty beat up.
snow, Renee??? uffda! i was thinking 41 degrees was a bit chilly but at least we are getting some rain also. it's getting pretty rammy in the barn since the goats won't go out to the pasture in the rain (i'm glad since i don't have any fences i need to stand and guard them while they munch). but Artie and Tammy are pretty bored so have taken to jumping up into the hay feeder and if i raise it, they just jump higher. two problems with that: Tammy has gotten her leg caught as she jumped down (yelled bloody murder) but the biggest one is that they like to stand on the feeder and pee. then, of course, they won't eat the hay because somebody has peed on it. gotta love the little buggers.
stay warm
Barb- Yep-its the first time in 60 years there has been snow here (Dickinson, ND) this late. It was pretty strange to see all that green poking out from beneath the snow. It melted by the end of the day. What with the snow and rain we received an inch of very welcome moisture. Now we really need some warm weather!
Terri in Zimmerman,
I agree with you on the movie (film) "Up". We saw it this weekend (in 3D) and had a great time. It was a full house, too! So full, our party of 3 couldn't sit together. With lots of little ones in the theater, it would have been a bit dicey to have a sudden 20 minute delay 3/4 of the way through the show. I'm afraid there would have been some lost 3D glasses and a bit of crying by the time it was over. That's a unique experience, though, to have your digitally rendered, computer animated experience interrupted so suddenly by a hot light bulb.
As far as songs about going to the picture show, one that immediately comes to mind is "Great Gold Sun" by Pete Morton, which is all about watching the people in an old movie.
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