Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes! (to the wiki)

They were hoping for more views eventually leading to revenue from YouTube.

The set wasn't fabricated physically. The bottom half of the news desk was taken from a still image that was included in a WXLT-40 retrospective uploaded to YouTube by Steve Newman the former weatherman. It's a color shot depicting four newscasters in the 70s sitting at the desk. It is exactly the same angle depicted in the hoax video. A few changes had to be made, like to the 'H' at the end, which is obscured in the color photo from the retrospective by the modern ABC logo. So that takes care of half of the news desk.

Here is that image:

m.imgur.com/nKdJzwv

The image simply needed to be superimposed on the front of whatever table or desk their actress was seated behind; an easy paste job in Photoshop or other video editing software.

As for the rest of the desk, the perpetrators of the hoax made one big mistake: they failed to include the wedge risers on the desk top behind the W and the S where the actress was sitting. In the AP file photos of the crime scene, a wedge riser (an angled ledge where the newsreaders could lay their copy/notes so they wouldn't be visible on the desk to the camera) is seen exactly where Christine sat. In the hoax video, "Christine" lays her notes down flat on the desk as she reaches for the gun, and you can see there is no wedge riser there where there clearly was one in real life.

Here are the risers; one is seen right behind the W and the S where "Christine" is sitting in the hoax video:

m.imgur.com/bSxq1BY

Also, the call letters "WXLT" should have been on the time stamp, not "ABC", and the time stamp should have been inside a black box in 1974 (I think—feel free to correct me). Also, there isn't a fade to black in the hoax video. All accounts of the incident and of the videotape Sally Quinn viewed multiple times before writing her WaPo article, describe a fade to black. In the hoax video, there is a DISSOLVE to a "Technical Difficulties" card, not a fade to black. And the time stamp STILL should appear on the Tech Difficulties card, but it disappears.

There are a few other mistakes they made that I'm forgetting at the moment.

Another thing is that you would expect them to have just a LITTLE more footage, the stuff leading up to her preamble to the gun shot. She had a brief exchange with the camerawoman about news footage she wanted to show about a robbery that had just occurred a day or two before. When that newsreel jammed and the camera woman told her it wouldn't play, Chubbuck said "It won't play..." (or something to that effect; she was annoyed, is the point), and then, "Well...in keeping with Channel 40's policy of..." etc. The way Sally Quinn described Chubbuck's reading of those final lines also just doesn't match up with the rushed and robotic delivery the actress goes with in the hoax video.