ITV Thames | closedown and transmitter shutdown | 14th December 1982

© FREMANTLE MEDIA/THAMES TELEVISION 1982
End of Soldier Blue
Adverts
Slouch and Ignore
Thames slide: weather forecast
Thames ITV (Philip Elsmore): closing announcement
Thames slides: Wednesday evening with song from Diana Ross' album "Love Songs"
Thames clock (12:36am)
Black and "don't forget to switch off your TV" warning
Black and silence
Loss of sync at 38:35
Transmitter shutdown at 42:15
Adverts:
Cointreau
Raiders of the Pop Charts album
Timex Quartz digital watches
Platinum
St. Ivel Gold
Mystique
Stones beer (I see Yosser Hughes gotta job!)

[@JoeScaramanga]

Wow. I had no idea ITV had shown Soldier Blue back then. Heavily cut no doubt. Absolutely brutal film.

[@TheButler191]

About 20 seconds after Elsmore says the final goodnight it looks like the weather slide was very nearly faded back in!

[@markroberts7303]

Tuesday 14th December 1982

[@stickytapenrust6869]

Cheers

[@markofsaltburn]

👍

[@khangphamchannel016]

“Slouch and Ignore” :)) I could imagine people actually don’t give a sh*t about watching this…

[@stickytapenrust6869]

😆😆😆

[@bobrew461]

Love Thy Neighbour...
At lunch time!
:-0

[@stickytapenrust6869]

After midnight…

[@MirkoMazzoni2000]

How comes they stay 30+ minutes with black and pure silence (whereas we have the CRT TV noise)?
I expected: (and there we compare Italian TV)
1. A loud tone to encourage sleeping viewers who thought the TV was off to actually turn the TV off
2. (If 1 doesn't apply) A test card to appear (did Thames Television have a test card?) (Italian commercial TV did almost always put a scrolling list of programmes often with music to fill the downtime)
3. The closedown to happen at around 0130 (Rai wasn't far at that time from this time to end their telecasting day as that usually happened at 0100)
At least there you have ½h worth of blank and silent to copy what Rai did (except Rai did silent blank for half that time before transmitter shutdown, except at that time they might already have stopped shutting down the transmitters until 0830 - and make the testcard appear at 0900 - and broadcast testcard or grey screen that is creepy).

[@stickytapenrust6869]

I guess Thames asked the IBA (who owned the ITV transmitters) to schedule the transmitter shutdown about 30 minutes after Thames closed in the case of programmes ending up running late.

[@MirkoMazzoni2000]

@@stickytapenrust6869 I guess that explains the 30+ minute of nothing before loss of sync (what's that?).
But did Thames have a test card or colour bars (like Granada had¹) or they did expect everyone to switch off TV and unplug it as they said (or either go to another channel)?
¹at least at their last closedown
Only to know, were IBA transmitters shutdowns "wired" with Channel Four closedown (albeit the latter always shows a test card within the two minutes after the closedown ident) or those 30 minutes were independent from the Channel Four closedown?