Things you don't hear or see on TV anymore

Yep, other magazine publishers objected to what they (quite reasonably) saw as the BBC abusing its position to plug BBC Worldwide's magazines. That line was meant to appease them. Not sure that it did.

On a similar note, news bulletins where the newscaster just launches straight into the top story without saying hello.

Unique, stylised end credits. Even those that don't just use black don't stray far from text over a background.

I seem to recall in my childhood (early 2000's) seeing Transmitter Maintenance slides on STV which would apologise for any picture interference.

Around the same time on BBC Scotland if you were trying to watch a football match using a digital service you were greeted with a slide telling you to switch to analogue.

http://i1.wp.com/www.tv-live.org.uk/media/stv/inthepast/PS4.JPG

Here in the US it would be station sign offs or if the station doesn't sign off it would be a message giving you the frequency information on a nightly basis, then it became a weekly basis in the middle of the night Sunday morning and finally nothing.

Here's was the only one that was active in the Baltimore market. I don't think they've aired this in over a year.

The testcard is still shown as part of the This is BBC Two overnight filler. It even has a BBC Two logo on it at the bottom. It's not in air for a particularly long duration admittedly, and is accompanied by tone, but it's not died yet.

There seems to have always been no end of US radio & TV companies whose names begin with "W" (or "WB"?). What the blithering flip does it stand for?

They're the station's call sign. TV and radio stations East of the Mississippi start with W, those West of it start K.

And if it starts with WB, it's highly likely to be a CW affiliate.

Not necessarily
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_television_stations_in_the_United_States_by_call_sign_(initial_letter_W)

In the UK it was a ITA/IBA requirement for the ITV companies to have what was called a 'start up' before transmission commenced everyday. This consisted of a slide listing the frequencies used by the company's major transmitters, and some instrumental music. Though ATV had at one point a song and a film that actually broke IBA rules. Lots of examples on You Tube, ( but avoid anything from C Williams of course)

It died out in the 80s, partly because there were simply too many UHF transmitters to list ! In the 70s HTV Wales went to three 'pages' I think?