The Max Headroom signal hijacking occurred on the night of
November 22, 1987, when the television broadcast of two stations in Chicago,
Illinois, United States, were hijacked in an act of broadcast piracy by a video
of an unidentified person wearing a Max Headroom mask and costume, accompanied by
distorted audio and a corrugated iron panel swiveling in the background to
mimic Max Headroom’s geometric background effect.
The first incident took place during the sports segment of
Independent TV station WGN-TV’s 9:00 pm,
newscast and lasted about 25 seconds, During the intrusion, the person in the
mask swayed erratically and was accompanied by a strange buzzing noise. The second incident occurred around two hours
later during PBS member station WTTW’s broadcast of Doctor Who and lasted for
about 90 seconds. The masked person spoke throughout this intrusion and made
references to Max Headroom’s endorsement of Coca-Cola, the TV series Clutch
Cargo, WGN anchor Chuck Swirsky; and “all the greatest world newspaper nerds”,
a reference to WGN’s call letters, which stand for “World’s Greatest Newspaper”.
The video ended with the person’s exposed buttocks being spanked by a woman
with a flyswatter before normal programming resumed.
WGN-TV
The first intrusion took place during the sports segment of
WGN-TV’s The Nine O’clock News. Home viewers’ screens went black for about
fifteen seconds, then displayed the footage of a person wearing a Max Headroom
mask and sunglasses rocking erratically in front of a rotating corrugated metal
panel that mimicked the real Max Headroom’s geometric background effect
accompanied by a staticky and garbled buzzing sound. The entire intrusion
lasted for about 28 seconds and was cut off when engineers at WGN changed the
frequency of the signal linking the broadcast studio to the station’s
transmitter stop at the John Hancock Centre.
Upon returning to the airwaves, WGN sports anchor Dan Roan
commented, “Well, if you’re wondering what’s happened, so am I”, and joked that
the computer running the news “took off and went wild”. Roan then proceeded to
restart his report of the day’s Chicago Bears game, which had been interrupted
by the intrusion.
WTTW
That same night, at about 11:20pm, the signal of local PBS station
WTTW was interrupted during an airing of the Doctor Who serial “Horror of Fang
Rock”. The culprit was the same Max Headroom impersonator, this time speaking
with distorted audio.
The masked figure made a comment about “nerds”, apparently
called WGN sportscaster Chuck Swirsky a “firkin’ liberal”, held up a can of
Pepsi while saying “Catch the wave” (a slogan from an ad campaign for Coca-Cola
featuring the Max Headroom character). and help up a middle finger inside what
appeared to be a hollowed-out dildo. The figure then ran through a series of
quick comments and song snippets interspersed with exciting noises and
exclamations. “Max sang the phrase “Your love is fading”, hummed part of the
theme song to the 1959 animated series Clutch Cargo and said, “I still see the
X!” (This was a reference to the last episode of that show, which is sometimes
misheard as “I stole CBS.”) He also feigned defecation (complaining of his
piles) and explained that he had “made a giant masterpiece for all the Greatest
World Newspaper nerds” (WGN’s call letters stand for “World’s Greatest
Newspaper”), and discussed sharing a pair of dirty gloves with his brother.
After a crude video edit, the person had moved mostly offscreen to the left
with his partially exposed buttocks visible from the side, with a female figure
appearing on the right edge of the frame. The (unworn) Max Headroom mask (with
the dildo placed inside the mouth) was briefly held in view while the voice
cried out, "Oh no, they're coming to get me! Ah, make it stop!" and
the female figure began spanking "Max" with a flyswatter. The image
faded briefly into static, and then viewers were returned to the Doctor Who
broadcast after a total interruption of about 90 seconds.
Methods
and investigations
The broadcast intrusion was achieved by sending a more
powerful microwave link transmission to the two stations' broadcast towers than
the stations were sending themselves, which was a difficult task in 1987 but
was possible before American television stations switched from analog to
digital signals in 2009. Experts have said that the intrusion required
extensive technical expertise and "a significant amount of [transmitting]
power" and that the pirate broadcast likely originated from somewhere in
the line of sight of both stations' broadcast towers, which were atop tall
buildings in downtown Chicago.
No one ever claimed responsibility for the stunt. In the
years since speculation about the identities of "Max" and his
co-conspirators has centered around the theories that the prank was either an
inside job by a disgruntled employee (or former employee) of WGN or was carried
out by members of Chicago's underground hacker community. However, despite an
official law enforcement investigation in the aftermath of the incident and
unofficial investigations in the years that followed, the identities and
motives of the hijackers remain a mystery.
An FCC official quoted in reporting soon after the intrusion
said that the perpetrators faced a maximum fine of $100,000 and up to a year in
prison. However, the five-year statute of limitations was surpassed in 1992, so
the persons responsible for the intrusion would no longer face criminal
punishment should their identities be revealed.
Cultural
impact
Not long after the incident, WMAQ-TV humorously inserted
clips of the hijacking into a newscast during Mark Giangreco's sports
highlights. "A lot of people thought it was real – the pirate cutting into
our broadcast. We got all kinds of calls about it," said Giangreco.
According to Motherboard, the incident became an influential
"cyberpunk hacking trope".