The video flips through an array of scenery: a band of wild horses gallops across a rural expanse, a whale’s tail dips into the water, a harvesting machine pushes through a field of crops, an American flag ripples in front of an industrial-looking town. The one-minute, 45-second clip includes a 9-year-old South Florida girl, Reina Özbay, belting the anthem into a hand-held microphone, a uniformed soldier giving a salute and a young boy with his arms wrapped around a serviceman, perhaps his father. Gray went through a casting process to find the right people for the video accompanying the music. Howell, 57, grew up in a broadcasting family in Waco, Texas and remembered the station that his grandfather founded, KWTX, signing off with the anthem around midnight and then going snowy. Howell Jr., Gray’s chief executive, said that he wanted to bring the anthem back to local television after decades of it being a mostly abandoned tradition. Within five months, the national anthem has become a daily part of programming at more than 350 stations across the country. Two other companies followed: CBS, at its 27 corporate-owned stations, including those in New York and Los Angeles and Nexstar Media Group, one of the largest owners of television stations in the country. Gray Television, which has 145 stations, mostly in small and midsize markets, made it a companywide practice several months ago. Some viewers might hear political overtones, too. Now, the early morning hours are filled with rebroadcasts and infomercials, eliminating any practical reason for a formal sign off.īut recently, television broadcasters have been reintroducing the practice of playing the national anthem once a day, pairing it with the same flavor of patriotic imagery, but in high definition and with multilayered audio. It is one of popular culture’s generational divides: whether you are old enough to remember when television stations concluded the night’s programming with “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Decades ago, viewers would see a slide show of American imagery, perhaps a mountain range or frothy shoreline and then - hours of static.
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