Many of you may not know this. Many of you may not even know Max Headroom. This was a fairly successful and popular Sci-Fi TV show, set in a post-apocalyptic world in which TV networks rule the world, and a liberation movements constantly tries to transmit their messages by hijacking the TV network’s signals with sophisticated technology. At the center stage was the fictional artificial intelligence Max Headroom, who became famous for his stuttering, his digital voice, and his sarcasm in many situations.
On November 22, 1987, an unidentified male person manages to hijack two TV networks within three hours in the United States. He is wearing a Max Headroom mask, and wears a suite, like the original, and appears on a rotating metal blinds background, where as the original had a sort of line pattern in the back, which however, also rotated. The hijacked networks were WTTW-11 and WGN-9.
The Max Headroom impostor
The first occurrence of the signal hijack took place during WGN-TV’s News at Nine. During Bears highlights in the sports report, the signal was interrupted by a video of a person wearing a Max Headroom mask, standing or sitting in front of a swaying sheet of corrugated metal imitating the background effect in the Max Headroom New Coke commercial. There was no audio. The hijack was stopped after only 20 seconds when WGN switched the modulation of their studio link to the John Hancock Center broadcast.
The incident left sports reporter Dan Roan flustered, saying, “Well, if you’re wondering what happened, so am I.”
But this was not all. The impostor returned a second time during a Doctor Who episode, this time on WTTW-11.
Later that night, around 11:15 p.m., during a broadcast of the Doctor Who episode “Horror of Fang Rock”, PBS station WTTW had its station’s signal hijacked using the same video that was broadcast during the WGN-TV hijack, but this time there was garbled audio.[1] The person in the Max Headroom mask appeared, as before, this time saying, “That does it. He’s a freakin’ nerd,” before laughing and jeering, “Yeah, I think I’m better than Chuck Swirsky. Freakin’ liberal.”
The pirate continued to utter strange phrases, including Coca-Cola’s advertizing slogan “Catch the Wave” while holding a Pepsi can (Max Headroom was a Coke spokesperson at the time), saying “Your love is fading”, humming the theme song to Clutch Cargo, and stating that he had “made a giant masterpiece for all the greatest world newspaper nerds” — the call letters WGN are an abbreviation for “World’s Greatest Newspaper”, in reference to the Tribune Company’s Chicago Tribune. He then held up a glove, said that his “brother is wearing the other one”, and put the glove on, but took it off because, he said, that it’s dirty. The picture then cuts to the person undressed below the waist and being spanked with a flyswatter by an unknown person, screaming and saying, “They’re coming to get me!” and “Come get me, bitch!”. The transmission blacked out and cut off, and the hijack was over after about 90 seconds.
Until this day it is unknown who the impostor is, who his accomplices were, and even more important, how he managed to hijack the signal. It would be apparent to assume that he must have tinkered with the signal as a live stream, as he did so in a news show the first time, which could not have been on tape. WTTW remains its broadcast from the Sears Tower top antennas until this day. It would require a serious deal of power to override the signal in the antennas, however, such equipment was available at the time for about $25,000. The impostor could have had access to such equipment, therefore overriding the signal to broadcast his surreal message.
Also, until this day, it is not entirely clear what his motives were and to whom the message was directed. All we know is that someone out there pulled off a great stunt, showing off his skills and knowledge about TV networks. Such an intrusion has not occurred ever since that day. It remains one of the greatest hacks ever done, although the methods and goal are unknown.
The TV interruption, subtitled (as it is hard to make out what he says). Notice the metal background, manually rotated by someone in the back…
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=tWdgAMYjYSs]
The incident has become one of the most interesting moments in TV broadcasting history, he also makes a chilling prediction as he says “made a giant masterpiece for all the greatest world newspaper nerds”. What he meant is unclear, but his interruption appears annually in many newspapers, and now even on YouTube.
Later on, in the movie “Hackers”, in the beginning ‘Zero Cool’ is working on his computer, his mother asks what he is doing. Zero Cool states “I’m taking over a TV network”. It is seen that he remotely controls a machine in an unnamed TV broadcast network which pulls out tapes and puts them into a sort of player which then transmits whatever is on the tape. I believe this to be a reference to the Max Headroom attack.
Damn Interesting: Remember, Remember, The 22nd Of November
Max Headroom Character
The Max Headroom Pirating Incident
Hackers (Film)
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