On-Screen Bugs of the 80s and Crawl Signals

Jeff Miller

Jeff Miller

EF5
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Another forum topic jogged my memory. Do you remember your city's on-screen severe weather bug and the noise that preceded the weather crawl in the late 70s and 80s (before the county map came in)?

Here's my list:

WTOL TV TOLEDO:
All Warnings/Watches

"W" in corner of screen CRAWL SOUND: four beeps

WTVG TV TOLEDO:

TORNADO WATCH/WARNING: tornado symbol
TSTORM WATCH/WARNING: cloud with lightning bolt symbol

CRAWL SOUND: Four dings like a doorbell

WNWO TV TOLEDO:

TEXT "SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WATCH", etc.

WNWO was one of the first Toledo area stations to air the actual text of the situation in the upper left corner of the screen.

Anyone else remember or have screencaps of the weather bugs of the past?
EDIT: Perhaps this should be moved to "Chaser Bar and Grill"??not sure.
 
Chennel 3 (NBC) in Wichita Falls, TX had the coolest crawler signal of all-time. It sounded like a submarine or some type of "scope", kinda like "Boowoowoowoowoowoowooo.....Boowoowoowoowoowoo.....Boowoowoowoowoowoo

That's the one thing I really miss since I became a chaser, I never get to see the events unfold live on television like I did when I was a kid.
 
The weirdest one I ever heard was a TV station in Manila around 1980 for its typhoon warnings. It was, together, (1) a bass kick going at 120 bpm, and (2) a little synthesizer noise that sounded like musical teletype. Really cheese and disco-esque. My sister and I used to make fun of it.

Tim
 
From the early to mid - late 1980's...
KARK channel 4, little rock (beep-beep-beep-beep-beep... a pulsating sine wave around 800 ~ 900 Hz; also used back in the day when they showed the radar during the weather segments). Symbol was "skywatch" for severe thunderstorm watch / tornado watch; skywarn for t-tstorm / tornado warnings until about 1983 or 1984 when they came up with a primitive outlined graphic of Arkansas. Counties were filled in with white.
The watch / warning icons / boxes were displayed on the bottom right of the screen.
Before the advent of multi-coloured counties displayed nowadays on TV, when a warning for a county or 2 was displayed, it gave some people the false impression that the watch was canceled. "Hey, the watch went away and now there is just a warning for blah blah county..."

KATV channel 7 did pretty much the same thing. Back in the early 80's, the station was trying to re-invent itself by calling itself "Super 7", cashing in on the superman craze that was going on at the time. The channel's number was shaped in a Superman type shield. Instead of the S, it was a 7. Get it? :)
The watch / warning graphic was displayed on the bottom left, with counties lit up in white. The screen crawl had this crazy jingle that I can't describe. At odd times, there was no Arkansas icon, just the "7" with T-storm or tornado watch displayed on top of / bottom of the "7".

KTHV channel 11 had the "11" with a thunderbolt graphic for severe thunderstorm watches / warnings, and a tornado symbol for the tornado watch / warnings. The crawl jingle was a snippet of the channel 11 news music used during that time (1981 through 1985 or so...). Toward 1985 or so, they displayed the Arkansas outline with counties lit up in white, with a fake radar sweep line rotating around clockwise (talk about cheesy now!).
The graphic was normally used on the bottom left of the screen.

Unfortunately for me, no screen grabs of those vintage severe weather symbols or crawls but I still remember them as plain as day.

KATV channel 7 was the first station to display multi-coloured counties instead of white. The new graphic came on line about 1991 or 1992. Channel 4 and 11 followed suit the following months / year.
 
Another forum topic jogged my memory. Do you remember your city's on-screen severe weather bug and the noise that preceded the weather crawl in the late 70s and 80s (before the county map came in)?

Here's my list:

WTOL TV TOLEDO:
All Warnings/Watches

"W" in corner of screen CRAWL SOUND: four beeps
Click to expand...

Many of the stations in central Illinois STILL use that "W", which has driven me up a wall in the 12 years I have lived here. At least the stations in the Springfield-Decatur-Champaign market do this. They do show the county map briefly around the time of a scroll, but usually the all-encompassing "W" is it.

From what I have seen, the Peoria market is more solid with leaving the map up the entire time (or nearly so).

I remember back in the 80's, WTMJ in Milwaukee used an "S" or "T", for SVR or TOR.

Chris G.
 
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