Worse yet, some generations will misread the symbolism, as my current TV displays a bright blue screen when set to an input that's not in use. This is probably a passing phase, though, as the TVs of the current generation have strange media hubs with crappy builtin apps.
A fan asked Neil Gaiman about it and here's the exchange:
A fan: "You're either paying homage to Gibson, which is weird because the two books are in different genres and he isn't mentioned in the acknowledgements, or perhaps there's some manner of Jungian collective unconscious phenomenon at work here, in which you have unwittingly mimicked Gibson, or..?"
Neil Gaiman: "Or it was a very small joke, essentially pointing out that since what is arguably the most famous opening sentence in SF was published in 1984, the nature of what a "dead channel" looked like had completely changed, from grey static fuzz to a pure dead blue. Well, I thought it was funny, anyway."
Oh God. I can see it now. [Static app] for your TV, purchased by old fogies. Configure Static app to come on when you fall asleep in front of the tv.
Most often purchased with [Off: Vanishing dot], [Stand by mysterious hum], [wired VCR controller (comes with 3 feet of wire)], [bad signal - signal degrades depending on weather]
We already have [Static app] in some devices, which apparently play some sort short video recording of static. So now we get static with DCT compression artifacts.
