I'm always surprised when I talk with friends who've only worked for big-market or well financed television stations. They never have any of the funny war stories generated by the cheap stations.
Take, for instance, WCWB-TV 41 in Macon, Georgia. The staff claimed the call letters stood for "We Can't, We're Broke." The station had one studio camera - one. Imagine doing news like that - zoom in to the main anchor, zoom out to a two shot with the weather girl on set, zoom in to the weather girl. Hilarious.
But the station is most famous for what it had to do to keep its tape machines operating. The chief engineer had no budget for repair parts. When a drive belt broke, he'd send an assistant down the highway to the truck stop. In the men's room, the assistant would buy a condom, bring it back to the station, and the chief would tie it together into a make-shift drive belt.
I think the chief had to pay the fifty-cents from his own pocket.