Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "Watching Soviet TV in the Early 1980's. Life in the USSR #sovietTV, #soviettelevision" video.

  1. The weird thing on the screen is called a test pattern here. They were commonly shown for an hour when regular broadcasting ended, usually midnight or 0100. Most TV's in the 50's and 60's had instructions on how to use the test pattern to adjust how sharp the picture would be and how well the regular shows filled the screen. Early color TV's also used test patterns to get the RGB color mixing right. By the mid 60's in the US, most TV's in the US were all solid state with no tubes, and it was the drift caused by tubes wearing out that made a test pattern useful. Soviet TV's were mostly tube types until the mid-70's, so I imagine that's why the test pattern survived so long there. The last test pattern I remember was in about 1968. Is this chapter a revision of an earlier one due to the copyright problem? I remember you talking about the travel shows in an earlier video. EDIT: Never mind, I should read down further for the answer on the copyright issue.
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  2. The Soviet Hydrometeorological Service had troubles with inaccurate forecasts for a long time. They were so bad in the early 30's that Stalin had almost all the top leadership purged. It's one reason why the Red Army had such trouble getting out a good forecast for Soviet attacks during WWII. Stalin was so pissed off with the poor quality of the forecasts that he believed there were saboteurs and spies were causing the problem. No one had the courage to suggest that maybe Stalin was the problem. In 1946, he had one of his top political allies, Voroshilov, take over the weather service, root out those anti-Soviet spies, and sent most of the top meteorological talent to the Gulags. There was a joke in the USSR that the only good forecasts were for Siberia because that's where all the weathermen were stationed. As you might imagine. there weren't a lot of college students in the USSR who decided becoming a meteorologist was a good career since they might end up in Siberia with too many blown forecasts. It's not surprising the purging all the technical talent of the weather service, and keeping the remaining meteorologists terrified, didn't result in good forecasts. Since the collapse of the USSR, forecasters no longer keep a bag packed for a quick trip across the border into Finland, and the accuracy of forecasts have improved quite a bit.
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  3. Are you talking about the Canadian service called Superchannel? If so, it was never taken over by NBC. It has filed for bankruptcy twice since 2010, the last time in 2017. There's some serious question about it continuing as a going concern. Even NBC hasn't been stupid enough to put money onto Superchannel.
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  4. Ah, okay, I didn't know there were two things both called Superchannel.
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  5.  @jeffw1267  The test patterns remainjed on those stations in smaller markets where, as you say. they didn't have 24 hour programming. The test pattern was more for benefit of station technicians while making adjustments to the the transmitter, although knowledgeable users could also use them to make adjustments to their own sets. Once tube type TV's disappeared, there were very few adjustments a consumer could make to his set, all those adjustment knobs on the back of the set went away along with the tubes. Even now, if you happen to be watching some early morning infomercial or old movie st the right time, a test pattern will pop up for a few minutes while a tech tweaks some adjustment to the transmitter. It always gives me a a bit of nostalgia when I happen to catch one.
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