system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
If we could travel far enough, could we retrieve the entirety of human radio and television broadcasts?

Are there any other theoretical ways in which we could retrieve them?
gpt
Not really - you can't travel faster than light, so you'll never "catch up" to past broadcasts.

If you had a magic teleportation machine - or, less impossibly, some aliens had set up a series of antennae several light-years away - then yes, you could in principle pick up broadcasts from the past.

However, in practice, TV and radio broadcasts spread out over space and become weaker, and would be lost below the noise threshold well before a light-year of distance. To communicate with probes on Mars requires special targetted equipment, and that's only light-minutes away. For programmes like SETI, people aren't looking for leaked radio signals - they're looking for intentional beacons sent by alien civilizations.