The Mystery Of The Max Headroom TV Hack
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On Sunday, November 22nd 1987, residents of Chicago sat down to catch-up on local news. On station WGN-TV it was showing the Nine O'Clock News. At 9:14pm, as sports anchor Dan Roan was reporting in the high-lights of the Chicago Bears game, the screen went blank. After 15 seconds an image appeared, of what appeared to be someone wearing a Max Headroom mask, stood in front of a spinning corrugated iron sheet. Mimicking the style of the eponymous 80s virtual TV presenter. He bounced around, to a soundtrack of static hiss, when after 30 seconds a technician at the station switched transmission frequencies and a confused Dan Roan returned to the screen. The shell-shocked presenter said, "Well, if you're wondering what's happened, so am I." And so was everyone else.
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The technicians suspected that the signal intrusion must have come from inside the station, but after a sweep of the building nothing was found. Then later that night, on station WTTW they were showing a re-run of a Dr. Who episode Horror of Fang Rock, when at 11:15pm the signal was hijacked. The screen cut to the same guy in a Max Headroom mask from earlier, this time there was sound. The technicians at WTTW had no way of switching the frequency, and so the signal intrusion ran for a full 1 minute and 20 seconds, before switching back to the Dr. Who episode. The switch-boards of both WGN and WTTW were jammed with confused callers. Federal agents were on the case within hours, investigation one of the weirdest and rarest of crimes, the intrusion of a TV broadcast.
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The Chicago Tribune ran with the headline, "Powerful Video Prankster c-c-c-could become Max Jailroom." and WGN ran it as their top story, under the title "TV Video Pirate". Both the FBI and the FCC began to investigate the crime, swearing to bring the culprits to justice. WTTW spokesman Anders Yocom said, "It is a very serious matter because illegal interference of a broadcast signal is a violation of federal law." The government were worried about such intrusions of TV broadcasts, and the fact that it appeared some amateur pranksters had managed it, was of great concern. This wasn't the first incident of signal intrusion. On April 27th 1986, there had been an intrusion in a HBO broadcast of the 1985 espionage movie The Falcon and the Snowman. At around 12:32am a test card pattern appeared, with a message superimposed on it, protesting the recent price rise for the channel. This was the first ever recorded incident of TV signal intrusion.
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Within days of that first intrusion, FCC investigators had found their intruder. Captain Midnight was a satellite technician named John MacDougall, whose mistake had apparently been to use a relatively uncommon text generator program to display the text on screen, a clue that led FCC investigators to MacDougall's employer, Central Florida Teleport, a satellite uplink company in Ocala, Florida. After the Captain Midnight case, the government passed a federal law making satellite jamming a felony.
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The incident, known as the "Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion" has never been solved. There are theories, from it being the work of a local hacker group to disgruntled employees of the WGN TV station itself. Particularly as the "hacker" makes direct references to WGN, and one of their presenters Chuck Swirsky. But generally the speech, or what can be made out, seems to be random almost drunken ramblings. People have tried to transcribe the transmission, which contains references to the "real" Max Headroom's Coca Cola commercial, and humming of the theme tune to the animation series Clutch Cargo. The fact that a copy of the incident exists, is due to Dr. Who fans taping the show. Many were deeply annoyed that the intrusion spoilt their recordings.
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