Looking for an old-timey TV graphic

February 25, 2007 3:39 PM

I'm looking for a goofy 50s-esque TV graphic that showed a station technician sitting at a console with either video tape or film wrapped around his body, and spilling onto the floor - TV stations used to show it when they were having 'network difficulties'

My classmates and I are trying to find this image for a small project we wanna do, and that's how one of them described it. There must have been more than one like it, because he said the best one was of a 2" video machine with film coming off of it.

Did this graphic, in fact, exist, and if so, where/how could I find it? We've tried Googling and looking through online stock photo sites, but came up with nothing.

posted by estherbester to media & arts (8 comments total)

This seems like the kind of thing you're looking for, which I got by searching Google Images for "please stand by".
posted by AmbroseChapel at 4:06 PM on February 25, 2007

As an aside, an aquaintance who worked in TV back in the day said that rooms full of tape were not an uncommon thing. The tape had to travel past the read head at a remarkable velocity, and if anything went strange the operator would find themselves nose-deep in tape. VCRs got around this by making the read head do most of the movement so that the tape didn't have to travel as fast.
posted by lekvar at 4:47 PM on February 25, 2007

Thanks, AmbroseChapel, that's definitely the kind of image I'm looking for in terms of style; but I'd like to see if there's one of the situation lekvar describes (with the tape everywhere and everything).
posted by estherbester at 9:22 PM on February 25, 2007

Here's one, although it may not be the exact one you're looking for. I found it by googling "technical difficulties."
posted by wsg at 9:07 AM on February 26, 2007

One Moment Please (from the Test Card Gallery)?
posted by cenoxo at 10:15 AM on February 26, 2007

I'd like to see more of these as well. There was one CBC one I recall seeing in a documentary about early TV. It was for use when a scheduled program was unavailable, and simply had the word "sorry..." and a bird flying away with a film can in its beak.
posted by evilcolonel at 4:25 PM on February 26, 2007

cenoxo, that's a pretty great site. I only wish whoever ran it would update/add more stuff to it!

We might just end up going with the one you picked out, though, so thanks!
posted by estherbester at 5:40 PM on February 26, 2007

More here.
posted by evilcolonel at 10:15 AM on February 27, 2007