High Flight, 1960s TV sign-off shown on Mad Men
The most recent episode of Mad Men showed a bit of an old television sign-off, called "High Flight." I have dim memories of watching it as a kid, and I wanted to see the whole thing, so I started looking for it. It turns out there are a bunch of versions using different aircraft and different narrators reciting John Gillespie Magee, Jr.'s poem "High Flight." The one above is in color. I'm not sure if it's the original, which appeared in black and white. Maybe it was in color -- our family had a black and white set.
Here's another version, recorded from a 1982 sign-off on KABC 7 in Los Angeles:
And here's another from KCRA 3 Sacramento, with Moog music:
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I never put it together that Reagan quoted from that poem for the Challenger disaster speech.
I wonder if he stayed up late and saw that sign-off as he sat around flipping through the stations...
Very cool. I barely remeber seeing these. The one with the F-104 Starfighter is great.
I feel exhilarated seeing these clips after so long. I wonder what makes them so compelling? This is the secret programming that only adults witnessed long after I was put to bed. The equation of militarism with patriotism is not unlike this week's convention hysteria.
Today it would be the voice of Oxyclean spokesman Billy Mays screaming at us from an infomercial. "But wait…"
JDIXON: that's actually the first thing I thought of. Damn infomercials. I kind of miss flipping on the tv at 3am and not finding anything to watch.
I think in the US some of the PBS stations still do The Star Spangled Banner flag/plane/country montage sign offs. Admittedly, I'm usually not up late enough to see them, and when I am up that late I'm likely too stupid-drunk to watch PBS.
Oh, and Mad Men is one of the best things I've seen on non-pay tv in a loooooonnnngggg time.
Where I was a young child in the early 70s, I lived on a military base with my parents. My older brother and I would sometimes walk to the near-by base movie theatre and I have vague memories of films like this as well as the national anthem being played before the movie.
I think no mention of High Flight is complete without mentioning this website...
http://www.skygod.com/quotes/
... or the book made from it...
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0070220166/ref=nosim/greataviationquo
... which collect pretty much every good aviation quote ever uttered by fellow fans of flight.
(No, I am not affiliated with them. Don't I wish).
And nice videos.
I am writing this from one of the facilities that for decades has been giving birth to many of these aluminum monsters :)
...The first clip *is* the original version. When I was a video engineer at the local See-BS station, I found a copy of it on 16mm in the news archives. As we had an Air Farce base until the 90's, this was a *very* popular clip, and when we'd have some of the Blue Suiters on one of our public affairs programs, they'd always wind up mentioning - either on air or off camera - how much they appreciated our signing off with this clip. When the base was closed down, the station dropped it and simply ran the National Anthem. IIRC there were about 8 versions of these, some produced by the Air Farce, others locally. The last one we used followed the same motions as the original, but each flyby was a different aircraft, with the last shot being one of the SR-71 flying towards the sunset, truly touching the Face of God/Yahweh/Roddenberry!
One of the things I miss about the Golden Days of Television was the Sign-Off and Test Patterns...
Ok, Ok, I was a TV nerd as a kid.
What about the sign-on?
I remember a station quoting Washington and Jefferson about freedom. Then it was the seal of good broadcasting (I believe Conan O'brien used to show it as a bumper). Then the farm reports.
But the sign-off on stations near the Canadian border also included the Canadian anthem as well. This was in the 1970's when U.S. media used to acknowledge Canada.
#8, yeah, I remember getting up REALLY early on weekend mornings, so I'd be in position and ready when the first cartoons came on.
First: Static
Second: Test pattern. Sometimes there were a couple of types. The color bar was first.
Third: Sign-on. Talk about beginning the programming day and broadcast on so-and-such kilohertz.
Fourth: Nationalistic stuff. Sometimes a film, sometimes a slide. If I remember right, Channel 11 in New York (PIX) had a drawing of the Statue of Liberty and a voice-over excerpt from the Gettysberg Address.
Fifth (optional): Religious stuff. ("It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness!")
Then, finally, business! Sometimes I watched the farm report (Ag USA!), but more often there'd be a cartoon available and I'd watch that.
There was a sort of terrain to Saturday Morning shows. Often there was a lame educational show or two way early on. (CBS had one called "Just Around the Corner".) Other stations showed OLD cartoons, stuff like George Pal puppettoons, Fireball XL-5, the last decade's Saturday morning stuff (Tennessee Tuxedo, Crusader Rabbit), or a "hosted" cartoon show. Eventually the Network channels would show the new stuff from the national schedule.
I must have stayed up late a few times when I was a kid, because I do remember the sign-offs. It always seemed kind of sad to me. ("We now end our broadcast day.")
Here's a more recent version from KOED in Tulsa:
http://tulsatvmemories.com/signoffs.html#high
gosh, it's nice to know that the boys are a swoonin' over madmen just like us girls. forget those silly jet fighters. the clothes! the interiors! the ciggys! gosh how i miss those good old mid-century days. if they have an episode that includes a helmsman bakery truck, i'll pee my pants i swear (did they have them in suburban cn?).
please, please, please a weekly recap of the dreamy deliciousness known as madmen!
Oh, man...the F-104 version made a huge impression on me when I was a kid; I remember it being the first thing that came to mind when my 4th grade teacher said we were going to have to memorize and present a poem. Never mind my present politics; this STILL gives me goosebumps.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I didn't originally see the film as a sign-off, because I doubt I was allowed to stay up that late. It may have been part of the sign-on lineup (thanks for that related nostalgia blast, Stefan Jones!), or maybe time-filler that the station showed when the weekend movies had strange running times. Watching this feels like a rainy Sunday afternoon, but in a good way.
High Flight was one of the first poems I ever memorized, due largely to that awesome F-104 starfighter clip.....btw, that plane was basically a rocket with wings...very,very thin wings.
Stefan, you really nailed it. I did the same thing, with a big bowl of Cap'n Crunch in front of me.
My TiVo-adept 5-year-old doesn't know how much better we had it as kids.
Mark, have you read Neal Stephanson's Cryptonomiacon? The passage describing one of the character's Cap'n Crunch eating ritual is classic. The roof of my mouth hurts just thinking about it. I loved "cartoon morning" as a kid.
I hadn't heard or read High Flight since I was a child, but I instantly recognized it as soon as it began. Hearing it just now gave me goosebumps because A) it's such a beautiful poem, and B) I remember what I felt like hearing it as a child - even though I can appreciate it on an entirely different level now.
It's almost like finding a toy that you played with as a small child, and having it rocket you back through time a few decades. Instantly, potently, fleetingly...
It's amazing how our perspectives change, with time.
(P.S. I especially like how the 1982 version promised to begin broadcast again at 7am with "Superfriends." That's just my vintage!)