This past weekend marked an interesting moment in the history of American television.  After many, many delays, June 13th marked the final cut-off date for the end of analog NTSC television broadcasts in the United States. From here on out, the only free over-the-air TV that will be available is digital.

The original date for this had been back on February 17, but Congress got worried that too many people were still unprepared, so they fast-tracked a bill to delay it until now. Stations were still allowed to shut down on the earlier date if they wished, and many across the country did. (it's rather expensive to keep an extra transmitter running...) When they did, many stations did something special on their analog feed right before shutting it off, to mark the occasion. I wondered whether any of the Pittsburgh stations would do this now, and set up a humorously-involved chain of antenna, VCR, MiniDV pass-through encoder, and computer... just to catch anything that might happen.  KDKA didn't disappoint:

The first part of KDKA's farewell is apparently a resurrection of an old film they used to use for their sign-offs... back when television stations did sign-offs, instead of just cutting to an infomercial.  This is followed by a very nicely-put-together retrospective montage of the station's history.  The montage made it to KDKA's website, but they didn't post the High Flight video.  To my knowledge, I was the only one recording that night, and I haven't been able to find that particular snippet of film anywhere else.

Also, I'll admit, I was a little disappointed the other Pittsburgh stations didn't really seem to do anything. WTAE and WPXI just unceremoniously cut to snow at midnight. Come on, you guys. This is a moderately significant moment in geeky television technology history!