The sound quit on my 9 yr. old RCA TV with two external speakers quit, giving me only static on all channels. All the speaker wiring appears OK. Any reason why this could have happened?

Have you tried to use just the built in speakers?

I could not detatch the wiring from the outside speakers or from the back of the TV, so no, I was not able to try the TV's built in speakers. HOWEVER, I unplugged the TV for several hours. For whatever good reason, this brought the sound back to my TV. HOORAY!