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David Korabell's avatar

this is my era - I was born just before the transition to full time color broadcasting in the U.S. My father was a television Engineer, so I heard many stories.

Such as : late at night the station would receive satellite feeds for recording for the next days broadcast. Engineers working the graveyard shift would sometimes entertain themselves by watching un-encoded porn channel feeds while they worked. This was big trouble if they got caught.

Well, one late-night engineer hit the wrong switch and sent the porn feed out over live -to-air.

There was an investigation because the FCC doesn't like that. Needless to say, someone was looking for a new job.

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Don Chisholm's avatar

>who is paying money to a phone line to be insulted?

So.... back around '86 or so I was in high school and home sick. For some reason I was getting calls from random weirdos all day, and since I was a LOT less patient back then I'd let them know how I felt about their calls. Quite vociferously. Couldn't figure out why I was getting these calls until I went back to school and found a "Dial Abuse" card with my number on it. A friend made them and as passing them around the school. So yeah, for a limited time folks could have had this for free....

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