NBN 3 Newcastle Sign Off 1989
NRN 11/RTN8 Sign Off 1982
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TVW-7 Close in 1997
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Channel 7 Perth were still signing off as late as 1997?
They stopped signing off in the first few months of 2000. Was 3am - 6am normally.
Why did they keep the colour bars at that point though? Why not the logo at least?
MTN 9 Griffith 1986
News and Sign Off
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TVQ Channel 0 Brisbane sign off from 1987
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NWS 9 Adelaide 1983
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Closing credits for a late-night re-run of Almost Anything Goes, a few program promos and a sign-off (Gary Mac), then Advance Australia Fair and God Save The Queen, from ATV10.
YouTube: Mike Squier
This video is dated 24 June 1981 but the sign-off mentions the debut of Holiday Island “tomorrow” night and it debuted on 23 June 1981, so by estimate and checking guides, this would have been at around 1.15am early on 23 June 1981.
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Here’s some signs offs that feel very creepy to me:
CBUT Vancouver sign off from 1979. Still image while beautiful music plays in the background, and the jump to static at the end.
Another one from the same CBC station in the mid 80’s. Videos at night, or places that no human ever visit. And that rendition of “O Canada” at the end.
CBUT sign-off 1985 - YouTube
CBUT also broadcasts in The Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and what is now The Nunavut, so imagine seeing that on a pitch black night, with no people around for miles.
And finally, one from ABC in WA in the mid 80’s. Very calming yet creepy at the same time.
ABC close of transmission 1985 - YouTube
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Here’s another creepy sign off, from SABC in South Africa in 1977. Everything about it, from the epilogue, to the national anthem gives it the vibe of a dystopia (not surprising considering that South Africa was controlled by a racist dictatorship around this time).
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Here’s a closedown (as it’s called in Commonwealth countries because New Zealand and Australia are amongst them) from TVNZ in 1987.
TV One (now TVNZ 1) closed down at approx 11.55pm on the evening of Thursday 8 October 1987 - straight after an 11pm rerun of Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner. Highlights for the following evening included:
- The District Nurse, a BBC drama serial;
- Holiday 87, a travel series from TVNZ;
- Kaleidoscope, a weekly arts programme from TVNZ (featuring a profile of late actress Elizabeth Moody); and
- Shooting Stars (Hawke and O’Keefe) (a 1983 TV movie starring Billy Dee Williams and Parker Stevenson)
After a preview of Friday night’s viewing on TV One (voiced by Lloyd Scott), a final look at the clock - similar to the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 from the UK. With the voice of TV One’s then continuity announcer, Mike Bodnar, it was 11.56pm and TV One opened transmission with The New Ed Allen Show at 10.45am the next morning (after 15 minutes of in-vision pages from TVNZ’s now-defunct Teletext service)!
And then finally, the closing sequence for TV One. Prior to mid-1987, the Goodnight Kiwi cartoon was broadcast on both channels at closedown.
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Another creepy sign off, this time from the BBC on their main channel in 1979. No music in the background, and the words “Jimmy Savile fixes it for some more lucky children”.
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Yeh. He fixed it, alright. 
Here’s my contribution to this “creepy signoffs” discussion, courtesy of WMAQ (NBC’s Chicago O&O):
WMAQ Channel 5 - PSAs, Meditation, Sign-Off & Joanna Lopez ‘Missing’ Slide (1/14/1989) - YouTube
There is an entire subforum on Reddit dedicated to finding out what happened to Joanna Lopez.
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The worst part about the Joanna Lopez mystery is that another broadcast 1 year earlier on the same station means that there was a very good chance that she could of gone missing years before (that also features that “Star Spangled Banner” film that had creepy subliminal messages):
WMAQ Channel 5 - End of Movie 5, Meditations, Sign-Off & Tricia Kellett 'Missing' Slide (1/24/1988) - YouTube
And there is a very good chance that she was never found as another broadcast from NBC 5 Chicago shows that she was still missing by 1991:
WMAQ NBC 5 Chicago Signoff (1991) Channel 5 WMAQ-TV Off Air Flag Raising Missing Person - YouTube
And the even worse part? The 1991 broadcast could of been faked, since no other footage between 1989 and 1991 can be found, and the missing person slide was shown for only 10 seconds this time before cutting to a test card.
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what were the messages?
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I think they are referring to the film print discussed in this Youtube video from the channel Oddity Archive
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Here’s some closedown from the 2000’s (yes, the 2000’s)
WIN SA closedown from 2003, jump to 12:08 for the closedown.
The CBC in Canada was also signing off as late as 2006 (2009 for their French channels), the sign offs (Canada uses sign off and sign on unlike the rest of the Commonwealth) were quite different in one way or another: here’s some examples:
CBC Montreal had a common sign off for CBC at the time - CBC Montreal January 6, 2006 Sign-Off - YouTube
CBC Ontario did not mention transmitter locations, but instead showed a map of the communities served - CBC Ontario Sign Off - July 22, 2006 - YouTube
CBC St Johns ended with “Ode To Newfoundland” after “O Canada” played, which was Newfoundland and Labrador’s national anthem when it was independent country, it joined Canada in 1949, before that, Newfoundland and Labrador was a dominion of the UK, they had also considered statehood with the US - CBC Newfoundland June 9, 2006 Sign-Off - YouTube
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From a distance it kinda seems odd that the local O&O CBC channels had surprising levels of autonomy, including with their local news looks, until probably the late 1990s/2000 roughly [Canada Now and all that] - and that’s still kinda seen with how some of the English stations refused to take all of the common look of the startup/closedown.
I get that some of the CBC English commonality was due to the ever-perennial budget cuts there (and the opening of the big broadcast centre in Toronto in the early 1990s probably offered some synergies there too), but it’s not like their main English language competitors were much different - CTV (post-consolidation) were only a couple years into their common local look, and Global wasn’t nearly the size it was now until that time too. It all sounded a bit of a hodgepodge, but I guess it kinda didn’t matter while CTV were a looser co-op.
[Compared to, I guess, the French networks, where everything is so used to being… apart from a couple of more populated places, simply a repeater of the Montreal service for both Radio-Canada and the commercials plus some regional news, and things fall into line that way.]
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