Now here is a blast from the past that I almost completely forgot about.

Night Moves (and others in the series, Night Ride and Night Walk) was aired during 3:00 AM and 5:00 AM on Toronto’s CityTV during the late 80s and early 90s.

The premise was simple and quite unique: instead of displaying the standard TV color bar and tone when programming ended for the day, they’d display camera footage of empty Toronto downtown streets late at night as saxophone intensive jazz music played in the background.

There was no introduction or explanation, no product placement, no host… nothing but footage of the city from someone with a video camera walking around, or behind the wheel of a car, while music played.

I guess the “show” was meant for insomniacs, but I thought it was really cool. As a little kid, I only stayed up a couple of times to watch these shows, but always found them mysterious and fascinating. It gave me a glimpse of what the big bad city of Toronto looked like in the middle of the night.