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Kara Kovalchik
6 Big Questions about your Television
by Kara Kovalchik - August 6, 2008 - 9:03 AM
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This week we take a break from your regularly scheduled programming and peek at the nutsy/boltsy side of television. From why we have the Emergency Broadcast System to who started Closed Captioning, these are all the TV questions that weren’t answered by your instructional manual.

1. Why do we have the Emergency Broadcast System? (And why’s it always testing us?)

The United States was fretting over the possibility of a sneak attack by those pesky Soviets in 1951, so President Truman announced the launch of CONELRAD, or the Control of Electromagnetic Radiation system of emergency notification. The fear was that Russia might hone in on American radio signals and use them as beacons for their atomic missiles. Under CONELRAD, all radio stations would cease broadcasting after an alert from the White House. Listeners were then urged to tune in to either 640 or 1240 on their AM dials for further information. By 1963, the Soviet Union had switched to ballistic missiles, so CONELRAD was retired and replaced by the Emergency Broadcast System. The EBS was a relay system, with a primary station receiving an official alert from Washington, which would then pass it on to secondary stations. The primary station sent the Alert Tone, which consisted of sine waves of 853 and 960 Hz, and then TV and radio stations across the U.S. automatically stopped local broadcasting and re-broadcast the emergency information being sent from the source. By FCC law, all radio and television stations were required to perform a random “Weekly Transmission Test Of The Attention Signal and Test Script” (“This is only a test. Had this been a real emergency…”).


The EBS was replaced in 1997 by the Emergency Alert Service, which allows broadcast stations, satellite radio, cable systems, DBS systems, participating satellite companies, and other services to receive emergency information automatically, even if their facilities are unattended.

2. Who’s behind Public Service Announcements?

The Ad Council was formed in 1942 when a group of Madison Avenue types wanted to contribute to the war effort without actually leaving their cushy advertising jobs. The result was a series of ads encouraging Americans to buy war bonds. They were so successful that President Roosevelt encouraged the organization to continue their work after the war had ended.

How does it work? A non-profit or government organization (such as the Boys Clubs of America or United Cerebral Palsy) approaches the Ad Council with a cause that needs support. The Council farms out the job to an advertising agency, which provides its creative and production work free of charge. The people that appear in PSA spots, whether celebrities or civilians, get no pay and no residuals for their work. The Council then approaches different media outlets – radio, TV and even the Internet – to get the ads placed (again, free of charge). The Ad Council requires that PSAs promote positive social change in such areas as the quality of life for children, preventative health, education, community well being, and environmental preservation.

3. How did Closed Captioning start?

Closed captioning was demonstrated at the First National Conference on Television for the Hearing Impaired in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1971, using programming and equipment created expressly for the conference.  A second demonstration was presented by ABC and the National Bureau of Standards in 1972 at Gallaudet University, this time showing captions embedded on an episode of The Mod Squad.  One year earlier, The French Chef on PBS became the first program using “open” captions, that is, the captions were burned right onto the video and were visible on any TV (not just on those with special CC equipment) and could not be turned off.

Picture 132.pngWhen searching for a better captioning solution, the National Bureau of Standards happened to notice that there were several bands of the television signal that weren’t being used.  At first the NBS toyed with the idea of using it for sending the precise time on a nationwide basis, thus eliminating the need to dial the local 555-1212 number. That plan fizzled, so it was decided to use the signal to send captioned text instead. Closed captioning using the “Line 21” method was kicked off in March 1980; the first programs to use the service were The Wonderful World of Disney (NBC), The ABC Sunday Night Movie (ABC), and Masterpiece Theatre (PBS). Two years later the 54th Annual Academy Awards became the first program to utilize real-time captioning.

4. What is UHF?

Picture 162.pngLong before it was a Weird Al movie, UHF meant ultra-high frequency and operated channels between 300 MHz and 3.0 GHz. But to pre-cable-era couch potatoes, UHF meant “anything higher than 13.” UHF stations had been popping up sporadically across the U.S. since 1949, but not that many people were able to watch them. Televisions weren’t equipped to receive the frequency, and interested viewers had to buy and hook up a separate converter box to their set to watch Count Scary’s Horror Classics or Happy Stella Kowalski’s Schottische Hour. Even though the programming pickings were slim on UHF stations, the FCC was handing out licenses right and left and more and more locally-owned channels were being launched. But with so few viewers, it was hard to sell advertising time, and the entire UHF concept was in danger of becoming extinct. The solution to the problem came in 1962, when President John F. Kennedy signed the “all channel bill” into law, which made it mandatory for any television set manufactured in (or imported into) the U.S. after April 30, 1964, to be equipped to receive both VHF and UHF channels. Interestingly, even though “diversity” had yet to become a catch phrase, it was the main impetus behind the bill. Many of the UHF stations broadcasted foreign-language programs indigenous to their area (Spanish in Chicago, Arabic in Detroit, etc.) and the FCC wished to preserve and promote “a multitude of tongues”

Picture 141.pngOriginally, channels 14-83 were designated for UHF use, but for some reason, very few stations were assigned any number above 69. In the mid-1980s, channels 70 through 83 were removed from television and assigned to the then-new analog cell phone industry. Some savvy (and naughty) TV viewers may remember the days of being able to eavesdrop on their neighbor’s phone calls by using the UHF tuner.

5. Why are ads so much louder than the show?

Picture 171.pngHow many times per your TV viewing day do you grumble “The commercials are so much louder than the regular programming, there be a law against that…”? Actually there is a law, sort of. The FCC limits the volume of audio transmissions by television broadcasters; that is, they dictate the highest level or modulation that the transmitters can send their signals to your TV set. The volume level stays the same when a commercial break comes on, but savvy advertisers take advantage of sound technology and fill up the entire audio spectrum with sound. Using signal compression, they layer music, sound effects and speech throughout the full dynamic range. The result is a sound that is denser and more complex than that of the regular programming, which our ears interpret as “louder.” In addition, a TV program usually doesn’t constantly broadcast at peak volume; they have “peaks” and “valleys” of loudness, as do humans in normal everyday conversation. But advertisers only have 30 seconds to get your attention, so they traditionally assault us at full volume for the duration of their message.

6. What Used to Happen at the End of a Broadcast Day

Once upon a time, before some marketing genius figured out that the idle overnight hours could be sold to infomercial folks, TV stations signed off at night (usually around one or two o’clock in the morning). Even though FCC regulations only required that stations identify themselves by call sign, city of license and channel number prior to sign-off, most stations made a mini-production number of their farewell message. Each station had its own trademark “good night,” which entertained insomniacs, graveyard shift workers and folks with pneumonia who could only “sleep” upright in a living room chair because laying prone led to bouts of paroxysmal coughing, and the TV was their only friend while the rest of their family taunted them from the distance with their peaceful, slumbering snores… not that I’m bitter… Sorry, I got sidetracked. Anyway, traditional sign-offs included not only station information, but also some sort of “sermonette” or spiritual message, followed the playing of the National Anthem accompanied by appropriately inspirational film footage. A test pattern would appear onscreen for a short period of time before the picture would dissolve into “snow,” which sent some of us reaching for the radio dial and thanking the heavens that at least disc jockeys worked all night.

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Comments (16)

  1. I’m old…I remember UHF (not the movie) and being able to get stations far, far away when weather permitted (getting Chicago stations in NJ was cool).

    Heck I even remember B&W tv with no remotes!

    posted by beth on 8-6-2008 at 9:45 am

  2. I remember turning the VHF dial (to zero or one I think) so that you could switch and use the upper dial for the UHF. The lower dial only had 13 spots so each turn was a big movement and almost a thumping noise. The upper dial had lots of channels, so it was a series of quick clicks when you changed stations.

    Forget remotes, these TVs didn’t have buttons.

    posted by Auslander on 8-6-2008 at 10:36 am

  3. I remember watching the UHF channel Jukebox, a music video channel that was… well a dial up jukebox for videos. It would be the first place I saw/heard Nirvana and Pearl Jam and thus profoundly affecting my wardrobe and music taste for the next few years in high school.

    posted by marty on 8-6-2008 at 10:51 am

  4. I remember using the TV to look for tornadoes. You went to channel 13 and turned the brightness control almost all the way down, then switched to channel 2. If the screen brightened, there was a tornado somewhere in the vicinity. (In all my years in Tornado Alley, this only worked once.)

    posted by loomis on 8-6-2008 at 10:51 am

  5. Oh yes, I remember. Late 60s. Our TV had 2 dials. We had channels 17, 23, 25, 33, 43 and 63 (Why all the 3s?) Channel 43 was the best. All the greats were on after school: Speed Racer, Johnny Quest, Ultra Man, Astro Boy, Kimba.

    posted by KJ on 8-6-2008 at 11:53 am

  6. It may be the sound on my computer, but in that last YouTube clip that may be the most techno/synth version of the Star Spangled Banner ever.

    Cool article! I still have an old aerial-tuner TV in my workshop; it pulls the local channels, and I didn’t have to go to the trouble of running a cable drop for it.

    posted by Roger on 8-6-2008 at 1:02 pm

  7. not only do i remember the tv going off after playing the national anthem, but they also played dixie. (tennessee & mississippi). the radio stations went off at sunset, again closing with the playing of dixie. this was in the 60s and 70s. with all the local radio stations off, you could actually tune in to stations in chicago & cincinnati, albeit a little staticky (don’t think that’s a word).

    posted by ruthie on 8-6-2008 at 1:04 pm

  8. Cartoon Network actually has a “good night” message at 11 o’clock (most nights) because they share the channel with the Adult Swim network.

    posted by Joanna on 8-6-2008 at 1:30 pm

  9. Regarding the Emergency Alert System, why was it not utilized on 9/11/2001 in NYC and DC? Isn’t that what it was for? To let citizens know about local emergencies? If anyone knows, I would love to know.

    posted by Amy on 8-6-2008 at 3:02 pm

  10. I don’t know if it’s something wrong with my browser, but the formatting seems a bit off. No matter how many times I try to load it in Firefox, it’ll spill off the page, as if the CSS wasn’t loading correctly. For some reason, however, it’ll show just fine in Safari, so maybe it’s just my browser. Any hints?

    posted by Nicole on 8-6-2008 at 4:07 pm

  11. Sorry for the double post, but even though I’m a child of the (late) 80’s, we had an ancient TV that we would just refuse to throw away. Even though we always had the latest in technology, that TV did its duty in the guestroom for years. My mom bought it right out of college in the early 70’s, though the TV itself was from 1964-65. If it really was from that time, it would have been one of the first “all channel” TV’s. One of the biggest things about it that I remember is that it would need to warm up a minute or two before you’d get a picture (a very foreign thing for my generation). It didn’t even have a remote for it; if you wanted to turn it on, you would have to go to the TV to turn it on, then either change the channels at the TV using the knobs (when it didn’t have cable connected), or use the remote for the cable box to change the channels. Oh, and when we did connect cable to it, we had to use a special converter because it didn’t have any modern connections on the back.

    Funny enough, when we finally got rid of it in 2005, it still worked! It makes me wonder if the TV’s they produce today will last that long.

    posted by Nicole on 8-6-2008 at 4:26 pm

  12. If I remember correctly, sometime during the 80’s the emergency broadcast system went of in certain areas in TX. An announcer opened his ‘envelope’ in order to follow the instructions and found that there was no instructions. Not even a ‘bend over and kiss your a$$ goodbye’

    posted by Owen on 8-6-2008 at 4:35 pm

  13. That was a synthh version, I used to see that same version on the National Anthem before movies at the theater on an Air Force Base.

    posted by PartiallyDeflected on 8-6-2008 at 10:53 pm

  14. I remember TVs without remotes! And UHF channels. In Milwaukee, back in those days, Channel 18 bought a lot of British series, so I got to see Man About the House and Robin’s Nest one night and Three’s Company on ABC the next. And I forget which station, but one of them used The Beatles’ “Good Night” as its sign-off music.

    We had a great big GE color set in the 70s, with actual wood paneling. When SelectTV came in the early 80s, my 11-year-ish cousin would spend a good part of the night after 10pm trying to figure out how to unscramble the signal to see the dirty movies. ::shakes head::

    posted by Brooklynperson on 8-7-2008 at 5:30 pm

  15. I understand why we need to have the EAS, and also why they need to test it from time to time, but what I DON’T understand is why they have to test it in the wee hours of the morning, when most of us are sound asleep. It just about blasts me straight out of the bed! I’d turn the TV off, but Hubby doesn’t always sleep thru the night and he leaves it on all night. *Sigh* I’d try earplugs if I didn’t have to be able to hear the alarm clock.

    posted by mama9cats on 8-11-2008 at 10:59 am

  16. Where are the other 5? #1 is here, but it says 6 questions about my TV.

    posted by taco bill on 8-19-2008 at 12:55 pm

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