The Spirit of the Spirit of Texas

By Robert Wilonsky Tue., Jun. 16 2009 at 9:37 AM

Categories: Media

A Friend of Unfair Park directs our attention to Uncle Barky's nice YouTube discovery: WFAA-Channel 8's analog adios on Friday, a brief retrospective of the ABC affiliate that offers a far fancier farewell than KXAS-Channel 5's anti-climactic fade-to-static. It's worth a look-see, especially for longtime locals for whom Pete Delkus's history lesson is more like a trip down Memory Lane.

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We have rescanned on both channel 3 & 4 multiple times. I think I'm more irritated at losing "Mission Impossible" on Ch 52 than the news on ch 8! The only thing we watch on ch 8 is the news and Nightline, on the extremely rare occasion that it still resembles an in-depth news program as opposed to Inside Edition. We'll live.
@GeorgeT: Cable and satellite customers aren't seeing analog channels anymore either. But since they aren't received by an antenna, there is no change since Friday. I just found a blog post on wfaa.com that's helpful for folks with antennas: http://www.beloblog.com/computer/2009/06/doublerescanning-may-help-digital-tv-rec.html
I got a converter box for free and could hardly pick up any station without freezing. I was using a crap antenna, but I switched back to analog cable immediately. If Time Warner even ends the analog cable, that's the end of TVs in our house.
For all the Belo-bashing (some of which is justified), you have to admire the fact that the company takes pride in its history. I think the fact that other stations are owned by their networks and controlled more at a national level has a lot to do with their lack of analog history at signoff. I was surprised that KXAS didn't do more, given that they've be on air the longest. Sounds like their staff cuts prevented them from putting something together.
@nmlhats Did you rescan your converter box on Friday afternoon? Channel 8 and a few others had to vacate their signals and "move". Channel 8 is now broadcasting from Channel 9 (signal-wise) but can be mapped to channel 8. Channel 8's signal has actually gotten stronger since the switchover.
You can feel the pride in the old sign-off sequence. That seems to be missing in all the imports to the local media market. I know it gave me a few goosebumps just looking at it once more. Put some natives in charge again! I would love to see some footage from that old dance show they filmed at North Park in the 60s. If you are a native, I don't even have to mention the name of it. So the rest of you can guess. Oh and all hail Mr. Peppermint!
WFAA appears to be the only local station paying tribute to their analog roots. Other stations around the nation seemed to mark this occasion with the respect it deserved, I wonder why noone else in this market got with the program??
We don't get channel 8 any more. It has never come in with our antenna and HD converter box. As long as we still had an analog signal we could flip over and use that, but now we are an ABC-less and WFAA-less household. We even lost ch 52 after the switch--but even stranger, we could get their digital signal just fine until the official switch. Now, nothing. And so we can't even get the ch 8 news reruns on 52. Forgive me if I have a lack of interest in ch 8 history at this point.