KCRA Channel 3 Sacramento sign-off 1986

KCRA was on the air 24 hours a day, with a straight feed of the CNN Headline News channel filling out the later hours, except for Sunday nights when they'd sign off with this at 12:30 AM. By 1987 they finally put in Headline News Sunday nights as well and were full 24-hours.

This includes one of two versions I've seen of the "High Flight" poem with Air Force footage, followed by "Bluebird Of Happiness" which might have looked a lot nicer if the film they used wasn't so grainy and dirty.

The tape this was recorded on ran out right at the end of the sign-off, so you don't get to see what happened afterwards- most of the time the screen would go white, with the station logo at the bottom and the signal would stay on with silence til sign-on time. Since 2000 KCRA has stuck its logo on the screen during all non-NBC programming, so essentially they are just a big test pattern now, at least til June '09 when the analog station finally goes off the air.

This is recorded from a stereo broadcast; it was common at the time for stations to run all mono material through a fake stereo processor, often with annoying results.
**UPDATE! It seems that YouTube is now playing this clip in STEREO, at least if you have your preferences set to default to High Quality! If you have the ability to play just the left and the right channels separately, switch back and forth and try to hear how the station's "stereo processor" worked!

I've got another recording of this which does include the final fade-out and a few seconds of the white screen that ran the rest of the night, I'll try to get that up soon.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• sign-off
• late-night
• 1980s
• JanPeerce
• WilliamConrad
• KellyBroadcasting

[jerrymouse16]

Do you Have Any clips Of KCRA Signing On?

[eyeh8cbs]

Not on tape, but I did get up early to see the sign-on a couple times. They showed more video footage of the station with the same music, then the announcer said "Channel 3 will transmit a test pattern for the next few minutes, then begin our broadcast day", and go to color bars as opposed to the white screen that usually stayed on all night.

[columbusmediatalk]

Does anybody know the name of the music they play during the first 16 seconds of the video?

[eyeh8cbs]

I don't know the name of it, but it is production library music. I've heard it in a couple commercials and on the end credits of one of the first laserdisc demos, "Laserdisc: What It Is" from Pioneer.

[co678]

Man KCRA was much better then, now its just crap, I never even touch KCRA 3 non-primetime hours, then again most Sac area TV sucks.

[gshowguy]

Ah... when KCRA didn't suck. (As a kid visiting a town near Sacramento, I watched Channel 3's news quite often.)

[eyeh8nbc]

@PortPowerAZ Their Sunday late-night line-up consisted of Sports Machine at 11:30, At The Movies at 12:00, then sign-off, except for a while in 1986 they added "The New Candid Camera Show" at 12:30 which was actually from the 70s. They aired that most weeknights at 2:30 too. Many of those had the original "promotional consideration" tags at the end, which already looked quite old.

[PortPowerAZ]

This got me to thinking of when my dad used to repair airplanes at McClellan AFB from the 70's until its decommissioning in the early 90's.. I would see this not soon after George Michael's Sports Machine, broadcast from WRC-TV until a few years ago, thanks to 24/7 sports news killed it..

[Ronbo710]

AWESOME!! I grew up in Manteca just south and I always found these cool sign offs spooky lol. Back when there were only three stations in the Valley :).

[groucho1953]

@columbusmediatalk If you are talking about the ABC signoff it's called JUPITER from "THE PLANET"S.

My brother told me this he works at Griffin observatory. I like that music too.

[paintmn1]

Even if you went to bed early... people would set there alarms just to get up and watch this.That's about all the exitement one could stand in those days.

[ums07]

Where can I get a copy of this?

[bloodurine]

A station here in Las Vegas played the High Flight/Air Force part, luckily we didn't have to endure the song that follows. Fantastic story about the poem and how the original copy was sent to Dad and now resides in The Library of Congress.

Oh how I miss those days of my youthful innocence. Thanks for posting a real gut wrencher. (Added to favorites)

[goldcylon]

My dad used to work for the TV 40 back in the 50's, and Ice Land that just burned down.

[owadave]

I have wanted to see this version of High Flight for decades. Thank you so much for posting this!

[g0thchik77]

I remember seeing the beginning High Flight when I was a kid. It still spooks me to this day.