When somebody is using a television (or radio, video game, or other media device), a dramatic interruption can be created by somebody switching it off. This might be done because they cannot bear to hear or see what is being broadcast because they do not want somebody else (often children) to hear the broadcast, or to put themselves into focus when everybody else's attention is on the television.
This is often done with little or no discussion, can be met with protests (or occasionally, cries of assent) from the people watching, and can lead to somebody immediately trying to switch the set on again. This can be downplayed by simply muting the TV sound, rather than switching the set off completely.
This often happens just after something important has been broadcast, which the characters then discuss; or it can happen just before an important moment, which is then lost forever (although nowadays, this can be averted with more modern devices, such as catch-up TV).
Truth in Television, as many families can testify.
This can overlap with Percussive Shutdown, Shoot the Television, and Astonishingly Appropriate Interruption. See also Book Snap for a non-technological related trope. Not to be confused with a programme being interrupted by This Just In!, although a dramatic switch-off can follow on from this. Compare with Antenna Adjusting, for when the TV signal disappears at an important moment.
Note that this trope does not apply when somebody switches off a television simply because a programme has finished unless there is a particularly dramatic reason to do so.
Examples
Anime & Manga
- Gurren Lagann: Played with. When Yoko is trapped in the Anti-Spirals Lotus-Eater Machine, she breaks herself out by reframing the amazing life she supposedly leads as just a television programme she is watching, then shutting off the TV.
- Kousuke Sugimoto's animated short The TV Show ends with all the shows colliding with each other, leaving abandoned cameras still filming the wreckage on the main set. In the empty studio, all the television screens turn to static, then turn off by themselves one at a time. Then the studio itself does the same.
- During the Yellow Temperance arc of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders, Joseph uses his Stand, Hermit Purple, on a hotel television. He receives a message (through Manipulative Editing): "There is a traitor who is among us all. Kakyoin, beware of him. DIO's loyal servant." Unfortunately, DIO hijacks the signal, and blows the TV up.
Comic Books
- In Batman: Fortunate Son, Thomas Wayne shuts off a radio that the young Bruce is listening to in a flashback, saying that the rock-and-roll playing on it is just noise and they have to get to "that Zorro movie", essentially implying that the reason Batman thinks so little of rock and roll is because he associates it with his parent's deaths.
- Breakdowns: Art and his mom loved watching The Dick Van Dyke Show until Art's dad received a phone call that a cousin had been hit by a car and died. Art's dad told him to turn off the TV so he can tell them the sad news. Art and his mom never watched Dick Van Dyke again after that.
Films — Animated
- 101 Dalmatians: Near the end, Roger turns off a nearby radio playing his song "Cruella de Vil", not out of anger or embarrassment, but because he's still down over the Dalmatians' disappearance.
Anita: Roger, after all that, your first big hit. It's made more money than we ever dreamed of.
Roger: Yes, I know. But I still can't believe that Pongo and Perdie would run away. - Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: Miguel is observing things via holographic computer scenes. One of the screens shows a video from the past of him and his child from the destroyed universe. The clip lines up with him in the present, and the screen shuts off to show the contrast of his demeanor before and after the incident.
- Toy Story 2: Woody and Jessie watch several of Al's taped episodes of the Western puppet show they were made as merch for, Woody's Roundup, only for Stinky Pete to suddenly turn the TV off right at the cliffhanger ending of one of the episodes. He angrily explains to Woody that the show was cancelled after that episode because the onset of The Space Race caused Westerns to go out of style.
Films — Live-Action
- Amélie: Played with, with the young Amélie takes her revenge on a neighbour, by disconnecting his television aerial while he is watching football; she has a radio with her, so she knows when the best moments are.
- Back to the Future Part II: Halfway through the movie's story, Marty and Doc figure out that Biff Tannen became filthy rich due to having gotten the sports almanac that was purchased from the future. So Marty infiltrates through Biff's luxurious building and, upon reaching his spa room where he's watching TV with two naked women, he grabs the TV remote to turn it off and then throws it at the spa's water. While Biff is merely baffled over it at first, he realizes how serious the situation is when Marty tells him that he knows about the almanac, so he asks the women to go away.
Marty: Party's over, Biff.
- Bridget Jones' Diary: A deleted scene shows Daniel obsessively watching sports on TV until Bridget switches it off to get his attention. He then reveals how he has booked them to go on a mini-break: when she reacts with delight, he quickly switches the set back on.
- In Shredder Orpheus, Hades and Persephone are first seen watching video footage of Eurydice as their producer persuades them to recruit Eurydice. When Hades decides to get her, he closes the meeting by dramatically switching the TV off mid-broadcast, whereupon it smash cuts to a different scene.
- Spice World: When the Spice Girls have the radio on in their tour bus, they suddenly hear themselves being interviewed, prompting them to rush and turn the radio off. This is done just after hearing the line "Come on Emma, what's it like to be Baby Spice?", prompting Emma to wonder out loud if she will always be known as Baby Spice, even when she is thirty.
- Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory: When the Buckets hear the news on the television that the last Golden Ticket has been found, Grandpa Joe mutters "turn it off", and they sadly discuss how Charlie's last hope has gone.
Literature
- In the Dear America book Where Have All the Flowers Gone?, set during the Vietnam War, Brenda switches off the TV immediately when the news comes on. Her sister Molly questions it, and Brenda says that with their brother Patrick stationed in Vietnam for nearly a year longer, if they focus too much on the war they'll make themselves crazy.
- Similar to the 1984 example below, when Jonas first visits the Receiver of Memory in The Giver, the Receiver switches off the two-way speaker in his room, providing a degree of privacy Jonas had never known.
- Matilda: When Miss Honey turns up to tell Matilda's parents about Matilda's amazing skills, Mr Wormwood protests that they are right in the middle of watching one of their favourite programmes. Surprised that he values "some rotten TV programme" over his daughter's future, Miss Honey tells him to switch it off and listen to her. He compromises by turning off the sound, to Mrs Wormwood's fury, as one of the characters on the TV is about to propose marriage.
- Nineteen Eighty-Four: The oppression of the ubiquitous telescreens is that they cannot be turned off, or silenced. When Winston and Julia have a meeting with O'Brien, he surprises them by turning off his own telescreen, which is a privilege he has as a member of the Inner Party.
- The Wimbledon Poisoner: When the Farrs are watching the news about somebody being poisoned by an apple, Henry abruptly switches the television off, perhaps because people suspect he might have had a hand in it. His daughter Maisie protests that she was enjoying it, and Elinor orders her to do her homework.
Live-Action TV
- Keeping Up Appearances: When Onslow simply will not do anything about the fact that there is a strange man in Daddy's bed, and prefers to glue himself to the telly as usual, Daisy switches the set off, using Onslow's own Percussive Therapy method of banging it, causing Onslow to howl in dismay.
- Monarch of the Glen: Archie having a tense conversation with Justine is accidentally captured on cameras on the estate, and this is watched on screens by Archie's family, and by Katrina in her classroom, surrounded by children. When Archie breaks up with Justine, Hector switches off his screen, and at the same moment, Katrina switches off hers; these are met with protests of "Oh!" from everybody else watching.
- Monk: Invoked by a fugitive bomber in "Mr. Monk and the Blackout" who causes the city to go dark during the airing of a concert right before a close-up of him in the audience is shown because he knew he'd be recognized. When the TV station runs the concert again to appease the viewers, he causes another blackout at the exact same point.
- Thunderbirds:
- Played with at the end of "Operation Crash Dive". When International Rescue are watching their triumph on the TV news, the television suddenly cuts out at the most interesting moment. Grandma enters apologetically, saying the fuse blew; and Scott says that Gordon will be able to fix it, just as he saved the Fireflash, simply by joining two wires together.
- In "Day of Disaster", Brains is watching the Martian probe on the television, and Lady Penelope switches it off, saying that in her house, everything stops for a spot of tea.
Video Games
- EarthBound (1994): The final battle against Giygas uses this trope as a form of Painting the Medium. Once he is defeated via the player themself praying for the Chosen Four's safety, Giygas devolves into red TV static (the same kind seen when booting up the game) as he slowly disintegrates. The sequence ends with several seconds of static, at which point the game appears to shut itself off, indicating his demise.
- Several sanity effects in Eternal Darkness Sanitys Requiem have this effect; one has your television appear to turn off, another claims that it's deleting the game's data when you're attempting to save it, another makes it look like your Gamecube is having a BSOD.
Western Animation
- American Dad!: In "National Treasure 4: Baby Granny: She's Doing Well: The Hole Story", Steve, Hayley, and Jeff learn that Francine fell down a well 35 years ago and watch an episode of Morning Glory about it. As old footage of the rescue plays, Francine (who is suffering from major Survivor Guilt related to the event) turns it off before they can actually see her emerging from the well.
- Being Ian: In "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" Ian believes he initially caused his older brother Korey to run away from home, due to the number of mean-spirited revenge pranks he pulled, with evidence like him taking his favorite comic books and a ladder propped up against the window (in actuality, his friend invited him to an Armadillo Man comic book signing, which is where the ladder came from, and he took his stash of comics to get signed). When Ian gets the attention of his family to announce what had happened by standing in front of the television and turning it off, his brother Kyle simply mutes the TV instead. Before Ian can say anything, however, Korey happens to appear on TV via a breaking news segment, with each member of Ian's family reacting to the broadcast, which Ian believes they already know about how Ian was the one responsible for chasing his brother away. When his mom points out how Korey is on the TV, Ian then gets on Kyle's case about how he didn't turn it off like he asked, before embarking on a journey to rescue his brother who is trapped on an unmoving escalator.
- Bojack Horseman: Bojack starts spiraling after his encounter with Angela, to the point where he breaks into his old house in a drunken bender. He puts on one of the Horsin' Around DVDs, and watches a behind-the-scenes featurette of his audition. His old, hopeful self contrasts with his broken thousand-yard stare in the reflection of the TV when it turns off.
- Futurama:
- In "I, Roommate", this overlaps with Missing the Good Stuff. The Planet Express crew gather at Fry and Bender's new apartment to watch an important episode of All My Circuits. Just as Calculon is about to reveal his "terrible secret", Bender rushes into the room and the signal drops out; when he leaves, it comes back. This repeats a couple of times, with Calculon attempting to repeat his terrible secret only to get cut off again until eventually everyone realises that Bender's antenna is interfering with the satellite reception.
- Played for Laughs in "Time Keeps On Slippin'," where Leela first asks Zoidberg for his opinion on Fry. The crustacean first says "he'd be honored" to listen to her troubles, only for it to cut a few minutes later (due to the Chronitons destabilizing reality itself that it causes time to skip ahead randomly), with Zoidberg having turned on the TV and ignoring Leela at some point, to which she yells at him to pay attention.
Leela: —does the worst W.C. Fields imitation I've ever seen, Zoidberg!
Zoidberg: Sorry, you must have been boring me.
- The Simpsons:
- In "Homer Goes to College", Bart and Lisa are watching the latest Itchy and Scratchy cartoon, in which Scratchy finally gets revenge on Itchy, when suddenly one of Homer's college roommates unplugs the TV to plug in his rock tumbler, causing the two kids to freak out. By the time the TV is on again, the cartoon is over and Krusty mentions how they'll never let him air that episode again.
- At the end of "Some Enchanted Evening", Homer finds that his kids have tied up their babysitter Mrs. Botz and releases her, right before Bart arrives with the police and a news crew to apprehend the notorious "Babysitter Bandit". As Homer is suddenly questioned about turning a wanted criminal loose, he attempts to save face by describing the incident as a violent struggle. The scene then cuts to a thoroughly humiliated Homer watching his interview on the news, the chyron deeming him a "local boob", before turning it off.
Homer: Lord help me, I'm just not that bright.
- SpongeBob SquarePants: The end of "I Had an Accident" has a live action zebra run off with a gorilla. The camera then jumps to viewers watching the show, exchanging a dumbfounded look, then turning it off.
- Steven Universe: Played with. In "Maximum Capacity", Steven grows progressively more concerned as Amethyst and Greg spend more and more time watching the television show Li'l Butler, neglecting everything else around them. When Steven goes to confront them, he ends up walking into an argument between the two about Greg "stealing" Rose from Amethyst, who spent all her time with her until she met Greg. Li'l Butler plays throughout this argument in the background, but abruptly cuts to static when Steven yells at them to stop, coinciding with Steven telling the two they need to let go of the past.
- Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones?: At the end of "Cube Wars", Robot loses the titular championship thanks to cheating by the Yogman Twins, and he angrily watches the awards ceremony on TV with his parents. As one final twist of the knife, the Yogmans "thank" Robot during their acceptance speech, at which he finally has enough and turns his TV (and the episode) off.
"How dare you, now switch the television back on!"
