Sign-on and sign-off
A sign-on (or start-up in Commonwealth countries except Canada) is the beginning of operations for a radio or television station, generally at the start of each day.
It is the opposite of a sign-off (or closedown in Commonwealth countries except Canada), which is the sequence of operations involved when a radio or television station shuts down its transmitters and goes off the air for a predetermined period; generally, this occurs during the overnight hours although a broadcaster's digital specialty or sub-channels may sign-on and sign-off at significantly different times than its main channels.
This may include infomercials, movies, television show reruns, simple weather forecasts, low cost news or infotainment programming from other suppliers, simulcasts of sister services, or feeds of local cable TV companies' programming via a fiber optic line to the cable headend.
Some stations, after doing a sign-off, nonetheless continue to transmit throughout the off-air period on cable/satellite; this transmission may involve a test pattern, static image, local weather radar display, teletext pages or full-page headlines which was accompanied by music or a local weather radio service.
In these cases, the station's transmitters later did not actually shut-down for the afternoon break; either a test-card was played or a static schedule was posted telling viewers of the programming line-up once broadcasting resumes.
A frequency on which a broadcaster has to drastically reduce power or sign off entirely at sunset was traditionally the least desirable assignment, which would usually go to small or new-entrant stations when all of the more favourable slots were already allocated.
During Yom Kippur, virtually all radio and television stations based in Israel go silent for 24 hours, as required by law.
[48] This would become permanent in August 2012, to coincide with their sister channel TV2 by showing reruns from the broadcaster's archive library and movies on early mornings before start-up.
Member stations of the Catholic Media Network prominently follow the latter pattern, broadcasting Paschal Triduum services and other similar programming.
On cable, satellite, and live TV streaming, with the exception of specialty channels that broadcast horse racing, cockfighting, and the like that remain dormant during this period, most international networks distributed in the Philippines or Philippine-exclusive cable channels either continue to broadcast their 24/7 regular programming service week-long or provide specially-arranged schedules from Holy Thursday to Black Saturday.
