How did Fry knock out the Single Female Lawyer broadcast?

Question

One day in the 1990's, Fry delivered some pizza to a local Fox affiliate. He joined an employee there in watching an episode of the hit Fox dramedy Single Female Lawyer, and proceeded to spill fluid into the instrument panel. This knocked their signal out. Lrrr and Ndnd on Omicron Persei VIII were thusly unable to watch the rest of the episode that was airing.

From my limited knowledge of how our terrestrial radio waves work in space, couldn't Lrrr and Ndnd just tune to a different Fox affiliate's channel to watch the rest of the episode? Is there something special about New York City's broadcasts, like are they stronger than most cities'? It's not like Fry knocked out a feed from Fox to their affiliates.

Answer 1

The various Fox affiliates used differing VHF frequencies. From my research the following four used channel 5, the same as New York City, in the late 1990s:

• New York City
• Las Vegas
• Atlanta
• Washington

Given they were watching the show on NYC's Fox affiliate, they were obviously watching Channel 5. All of them had a less powerful broadcast tower than NYC (86 kW for Las Vegas vs 100 kW for Washington and Atlanta vs 246 kW for NYC), so would have been drowned out by the NYC broadcast.

Doubly unfortunately for them on the day of the Single Female Lawyer finale, there was a Redskins v Falcons game. As a result the Atlanta and Washington affiliates were broadcasting the Single Female Lawyer finale on delay. Lrrr and Ndnd on Omicron Persei VIII were so overtaken by despair and anger that they immediately hopped into their spaceships and headed for Earth. Unfortunately they didn't think to try to pick up the Atlanta or Washington channels to find the finale on delay, otherwise they could have saved themselves a lot of time and effort. Las Vegas, showing the finale a couple of hours later due to the difference in time zones, could've also been an option if the NYC affiliate was still down.