KTXL TV40 Sacramento sign-off from 1985

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• published: 13 Oct 2007
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Sunday night/Monday morning was a no-mans-land on TV for a long time, at least around here. Stations that usually stayed on the air all night would sign-off on Sunday nights, like KTXL which had "Night Comfort Theater" every other night of the week. (In fact, even in its current incarnation KTXL just started running programming all night Sunday a few months ago.) In the Sacramento area during the 1980s, KXTV channel 10 was the ONLY station that ran programming all night on Sundays since CBS News Nightwatch was on (which strangely the neighboring CBS affiliates didn't carry and would sign off on some nights instead!) This sign-off clip features TV-40's main announcer, Jerry Chambers (thanks to hdjanitor for giving me his name!) Background music is an instrumental version of the station's "Go For The Stars" theme. Afterwards color bars and tone follow with an onscreen clock. Usually they would stay on the air with this until 6 AM, only occasionally would the signal go off the air. This was recorded after KTXL increased its power and transmitted from its new "Monster Tower". Although they had stereo capability, they would turn the stereo signal off during mono programming. In fall 1986, they had a new theme (The Valley's Own) which was recorded in stereo, and changed the sign-off clip to include this music in stereo. When they started doing this the all-night test pattern was also in stereo, with slightly different tones on the left and right, which continued for as long as the station had no programming on Sunday nights.