[throwawaygh]

No, this would've been quite a bit more difficult than "hacked an AV system".

Hijacking small town public access channels was fairly easy. Taking over the feed for two different stations in Chicago is a whole different level. The basic hack is the same, but "just scale it up" isn't trivial in this case.

[fortran77]

If you were pretty close to the receiving end on the microwave link, it wouldn't be that hard to overpower the signal from the studio.

[GekkePrutser]

Yeah and it doesn't have to work great or long before it burns out.

People used chained TV reception amplifiers to broadcast pirate TV :)