Most T.V. channels straddle the 54-890 MHz (megahertz) frequency
band. But even as technology changes, and more closed circuit-
type T.V. transmission methods are used en masse, it is likely
that future video signals will still leak into space. But for
our discussion, we're interested in those early broadcast analog
T.V. signals-signals out there. Somewhere. What would happen if
terrestrial audio-and-visual signals, dating back to the Golden
Age of Television, were detected by extraterrestrials on distant
planets? Is such an idea possible? And what would
extraterrestrials make of our earliest T.V. signals? Even with
today's digital television retooling efforts, television is
disseminated widely by an old medium-radio transmission.
Broadcast T.V., in its purest sense, is a form of radio; that
is, radio with pictures. It may come as a surprise to discover
that the first powerful broadcast T.V. signals leaving planet
Earth were neither the shortwave experiments by pioneering sci-
fi writer and experimenter Hugo Ge