Post #1164773

2026-04-14 01:40 UTC

Found on a VHS transfer job I&#39;m doing. There is SO much to unpack in this 1987 clip: First of all, the CHSJ-TV ID is a physical sign with a camera pointed at it (edit: or maybe a film slide) - I approve. Second, that brief signal loss immediately following the ID wasn&#39;t an aberration or an issue with the tape recording - that was a normal part of the broadcast. CHSJ-TV was an independent station in Saint John which broadcast CBC programming transmitted to them from Fredericton or Halifax. They inexplicably didn&#39;t bother frame-synchronizing those CBC feeds, so every time they cut from a local program to a CBC program, everybody&#39;s TVs and recording VCRs were disturbed because of the lack of genlock. CHSJ ran their own local commercials during CBC&#39;s commercial breaks, so this sync loss occurred multiple times during a CBC program. (1/2)

Replies (3)

@themaritimegirl@tech.lgbt 2026-04-14 01:40

(2/2) Further to this, the reason the CHSJ ID stays up for so long is because CBC is running their own ID in Fredericton at the same time, and CHSJ master control needs to wait until that is finished before they cut to the feed. The cuts were manually performed by a human, and I've been told that it was sometimes sloppy - viewers would see the CHSJ ID, and then it would cut to the tail end of the CBC ID before the CBC program started. Finally, the theme song for the CBC News for New Brunswick at this time was "Speedway", a 1977 song by French band Space Art: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9gOY773vXY

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@davefischer@hachyderm.io 2026-04-14 02:27

@themaritimegirl My dad had a once-a-week, crack-of-dawn kinda local talk show in the 70s/80s, so I wound up with this 35mm slide, which was the station logo:

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@VE2UWY@mastodon.radio 2026-04-14 15:47

@themaritimegirl Are you the only genuine NTSC nerd left? Regardless, I am here for it!

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