They aren't mutually exclusive either-there could be both. Broadcasters could be giving every city free wifi over those TV waves, instead, we receive their free TV signals (which no one uses), which is carried over cable or streamed now anyway. They still exist and the broadcast real estate is called 'spectrum'. Then you just need one person with the know-how and ambition to pull something like this off and it's done, and the equipment is put back the next day, and no one is the wiser.ĮDIT: Also, FYI, you now bunny ears, those are broadcast TV antennas. I could easily see how left over equipment used for a demo there or a test in like Chicago could have easily gotten forgotten about by most people who work at a station.I mean 90% of the execs wouldn't even know it existed, aside for maybe the VP of Tech. There's a lot of money spent at these things. The second largest conference in Vegas after CES is NAB (National Association of Broadcasters).at least it used to be up until at least 2000's. Broadcast signals are put on-air for demonstrations and tests when they're putting something new out. They also could have pulled this off by using equipment a station had in storage. There are A LOT of smart engineers out there who could pull this off. I used to work in broadcast TV-the innovation sides - believe it or not lol. The early days of satellite television transmission were almost entirely security through obscurity and thus kind of the Wild West. They might have pirated a satellite feed and then some dude that handled the satellite feeds might have thought it’d be funny to cut to something he saw on a pirate satellite feed. Heck the guy in the mask might not even have had much to do with it. So in the end it was in their best interest to run with the fiction that it was someone using their own equipment. That the broadcaster has s as pretty good idea of who it could be, but that actually proving it would net both Max and the owner of the transmitter a hefty fcc fine.

My guess with this incident is that it isn’t really unsolved. These days there’s a lot less signs and a lot more locked doors. I grew up across the street from a hospital and back in the day an “authorized personnel only” sign was a virtual guarantee that a door was unlocked. Abs back in the day access to many things was a lot easier to come by. Mostly it just requires knowledge and access.

The screensavers max headroom incident