End of An Era: June 12, 2009

Not really an entry, just something eerie and hauntingly final about this clip, the last 2 minutes of the final analog broadcast in the United States. This final broadcast is from New York's WNBC, which began experimental broadcasting in 1928 (as W2XBS) and began commercial broadcasts July 1, 1941 with a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies. The station covered news of the bombing at Pearl Harbor and the end of the World War II in 1945. The station changed call letters in 1954 to WRCA, then to WNBC in 1960.

The station signed off analog for the switch to digital broadcasting near midnight on June 12, 2009, but remained on air for a few weeks longer with specially televised informational programs explaining the switch from analog to digital, then signed off again for the very final time two weeks later. The two week extension made it the very last station across the country to broadcast in analog, and 81 years of history came to a close. WNBC, like some other stations across the country, created closing graphics to signify the switch.