Resistors age poorly? Did they used to be based on, like, dairy products or something?
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Yeah, some carbon resistors will eventually drift up/down with time. Entropy gets us all, even the resistors.
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Considering that analog broadcast signals have gone the way of the Dodo, I’d say the restorer had it hooked up to an RF signal modulator and streamed in test content.
But I much prefer the idea that it’s haunted by the ghost of TV’s past. OoooOOoOOOoO!
Resistance is futile.
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The old carbon resistors were made by compressing a bunch of carbon powder and encapsulating it in a Bakelite shell. The Bakelite wasn’t dimensionally stable, and the carbon wasn’t either. They would change value with the weather, with aging, with humidity… really horrible components. I once found a bin of these resistors that had sat in the weather for five years. I checked, and none of them were the printed value, within the printed tolerance band.
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There’s a much simpler explanation… VHS.
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To be fair, that’s just what they do.
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That, or one of those converter boxes (ATSC tuner and RF modulator).
Wrong thread 
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That’s good to know about the degradation. I inherited a few cabinets of old components, neatly sorted but none marked. It’s probably in my best interest to dump the lot then.
Unless anyone in the Chicago area wants a mystery collection of '60s and '70s electronics?
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Pre-letterbox, it was “hatbox”.
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Every time I see a round TV and want to rewatch Wings of Honneamise !
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