The old round test patterns (Indian head and ones used by local stations) aren't needed much anymore with sets from about the 1980s to now (especially the latter), which is probably why TV stations, the few that that still sign off at one or 2 a.m., anyway, use the color bar test chart, with their call signs, channel numbers and city of license in the black area below the bars, but ahead of the large white square at the extreme right edge of the chart. The round pattern is useful when adjusting image proportions (height, linearity, width) on old sets that have variable controls for such, while the color charts can be put to good use when adjusting the 3.58-MHz color burst phase (or to diagnose color registration problems) on vintage color sets.
Some local TV stations put their call signs and channel number on the Indian head pattern as well. Many years before American and Canadian television went digital (also before I had cable), I remember seeing a pattern from CFPL-TV in London, Ontario with just that information at the top of the pattern. I could also get Windsor's CKLW-TV (now CBET) channel 9 when the conditions were right, but I don't remember ever seeing their location and channel info on their test pattern.
At least one Cleveland TV station (NBC affiliate WKYC on channel 3) used a round test pattern with color segments built right into the pattern. Never saw anything like it; in fact, I think that station was the only Cleveland TV station to use such a unique test pattern. Channel 5 had a standard round pattern, as did channel 8, although 8's pattern also, IIRC, had color segments incorporated into it. Cleveland's PBS channel 25, which first signed on in 1965, had a round b&w pattern, no color bars or segments; however, when Cleveland's first commercial UHF station went on the air in 1968, it used a squarish test pattern with one small color bar chart at the top, IIRC. The station's call letters were placed below that chart, with one letter of the call sign appearing directly over the vertical resolution test wedge.
Channel 19's test signal was simply a color chart, with the station's call sign and location info at the base of the chart -- again, very near the white square at the right edge. An independent station on channel 55 (now an affiliate of The CW) that went on the air in 1985 in the Cleveland area, but was licensed to and was intended to serve an area 30 miles southwest of the city, also used a color chart; somewhere, I have a VHS video tape on which I recorded the station's test signal after the end of a program. The station is WBNX-TV, CW55, Akron-Cleveland, Ohio. To the best of my knowledge and belief, however, they never used a round test pattern; neither, for that matter, did Cleveland's original channel 61, Kaiser Broadcasting WKBF-TV (now WQHS-TV Univision 61). Maybe by this time (late '60s), traditional test patterns had gone out of style?
