WGN Channel 9 - Emergency Broadcast System [White Card Message] - "This is NOT a Test" (1985)

Here's a pretty spooky clip - transferred from an RCA Quad cart (for playing on model TCR-100 cart machines) loaded with 2" videotape.
A Fuzzy Personal Note: "I grew up at the height of the 2nd great nuclear war scare period (the first being the Cuban Missile Crisis of course), having been chilled to the bone from seeing movies like “The Day After” in 1983 when I was nine years old. So this clip was very fascinating to me, and seems to be a glimpse at what we might have seen on TV had the unthinkable occurred."
This cart was donated by Rick Garofalo, a long-time employee of WGN-TV, before retiring a couple of years ago. In this video clip ( • 9 1 hd rtn 2015 02 06 ... ), you can see Rick on his last day at work (2/6/15) chatting with the WGN Morning News team and showing off the very cart where this clip was extracted from.
Here's some close-up pictures of the cart ( www.facebook.c... ), including a sticker on the inside that gives a date of 4/22/85. (The "J.E.W initials on the sticker stand for James E. Walters, a longtime engineer at WGN-TV who retired a few years ago)
Thanks also to our longtime Fuzzy Contributor Extraordinaire Mr. Chris Tufts, for donating the funds to get this cartridge transferred to digital.
Thanks to commentator David Wilson for this background information - "For those of you with familiarity with this script, you'll recognize the "White Card" information being read. It's also known as SS-1, an Emergency Action Notification (EAN-1) without the Attack Warning Message. If there had been an attack warning, such as an incoming nuclear strike, the Emergency Action Notification (EAN-2) was to read the dreaded "Red Card." The text of that script will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up, especially if you lived through the Cold War like I did."
Boy, it sure would be neat to find the Red card message from one of our local stations. :-)
Voiceover by Floyd Brown.
"We interrupt our program at the request of the White House, this is the Emergency Broadcast System. All normal broadcasting has been discontinued during this emergency. This is Station WGN Television. This station will continue to broadcast, furnishing news, official information and instruction, as soon as possible, for the northeast section of Illinois. If you are not in the northeast section of Illinois, tune to a station furnishing information for your area. I repeat. We interrupt our program at the request of the White House, this is the Emergency Broadcast System. All normal broadcasting has been discontinued during this (spoken as 'the') emergency. This station will continue to broadcast, furnishing news, official information and instruction (spoken as 'instructions'), as soon as possible, for the northeast section of Illinois. If you are not in the northeast section of Illinois, tune to a station furnishing information for your area. Do not use your telephone. The telephone lines should be kept open for official use. The Emergency Broadcast System has been activated to keep you informed. To repeat. This is Station WGN Television. This station will broadcast news, official information and instruction for the Northeast section of Illinois. If you are in northeast section of Illinois, keep tuned to this station for further emergency information. It is important that you listen carefully to announcements only on the station broadcasting information for your area."
We can probably be thankful this didn't air, but if it did, it very well could have been on Monday, April 22nd 1985. (a.k.a., the date the world ended in Alternate Universe #4702-AA-23-QZ808)
About The Museum of Classic Chicago Television:
The Museum of Classic Chicago Television's primary mission is the preservation and display of off-air, early home videotape recordings (70s and early 80s, primarily) recorded off of any and all Chicago TV channels; footage which would likely be lost if not sought out and preserved digitally. Even though (mostly) short clips are displayed here, we preserve the entire broadcasts in our archives - the complete programs with breaks (or however much is present on the tape), for historical purposes. For information on how to help in our mission, to donate or lend tapes to be converted to DVD, and to view more of the 4,700+ (and counting) video clips available for viewing in our online archive, please visit us at:
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