Web
Analytics Made Easy - StatCounter
Jump to content
  • Sign Up
Sign in to follow this  
KeybladeLordCheeseCurd

TV The Max Headroom Incident

Recommended Posts

post-54575-0-31806200-1427678995_thumb.jpg

 

 

 

The Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion was a television signal hijacking that occurred in Chicago, Illinois, United States on the evening of November 22, 1987. It is an example of what is known in the television business as broadcast signal intrusion. The intruder was successful in interrupting two broadcast television stations within the course of three hours. Neither the hijacker nor any known accomplices have ever been found, caught or identified, which leaves the incident unsolved.

 

 

During Chicago Bears highlights in the sports report of WGN-TV's The Nine O'Clock News, the screen went black for 15 seconds, then returned with a person wearing a Max Headroom mask,moving around in front of moving corrugated metal,imitating the appearances made by the real Max Headroom. There was no audio except for a droning buzz. After 20 seconds,the highjacking was cut short by WGN engineers switching the frequency to another transmitter. The sports anchor,Dan Roan,was bemused by the incident,saying, "Well,if you're wondering what's happened, so am I.",followed by failing to continue on with the sports news.

 

Later the same night, around 11:15 p.m. Central Time, during a broadcast of the Doctor Who serial "Horror of Fang Rock", PBS member station WTTW (channel 11)'s signal was hijacked by the same person that was broadcast during the WGN-TV hijack, this time with distorted and crackling audio,the Max imposter began mentioning WGN pundit, Chuck Swirsky, saying he is better than him. The man started to moan, scream and laugh. He continued to laugh and utter various random and unrelated phrases, including New Coke's advertising slogan "Catch the Wave" while holding a Pepsi can (Max Headroom was a Coca-Cola spokesperson at the time), then tossing the can down, leaning towards the camera and giving the finger wearing a rubber extension over his middle finger, although it was hard to see the gesture. He then retrieved the Pepsi can, and sang "Your love is fading", before removing the rubber extension, then began humming the theme song to Clutch Cargo, pausing to say "I still see the X", which referred to the final episode of the series, before resuming humming again. He then began to moan painfully, exclaiming about his piles (a reference to Preparation H), to which an indistinguishable flatulence sound was heard. He then stated that he had "made a giant masterpiece for all the greatest world newspaper nerds" (the WGN call letters used by the Chicago television station as well as its sister radio station are an abbreviation for "World's Greatest Newspaper", in reference to the flagship newspaper of their corporate parent, the Tribune Company's Chicago Tribune). He then held up a glove and said, "My brother is wearing the other one," and he put the glove on, commenting that it was "dirty" and that "it's like you got foot prints on it!" He then threw the glove down in disgust.

 

The picture suddenly cut over to a shot of the man's lower torso. His buttocks were partly exposed, and he was holding the now-removed mask up to the camera (with the rubber extension now placed in the mouth of the mask), howling, "They're coming to get me!" An unidentified accomplice wearing a French maid outfit said to him, "Bend over, b***h!"

 

The accomplice then started to spank the man with a flyswatter as the man screamed loudly to "make it stop." The high jacking lasted for 90 seconds before blacking out and returning to the Doctor Who episode.

 

WTTW, which maintained its transmitter atop the Sears Tower, found that its engineers were unable to stop the hijacker, due to the high microwave signals that the hijacker was using, as well as the fact that there were no engineers on duty at the Sears Tower at the time of the hijacking. According to station spokesman Anders Yocom, technicians monitoring the transmission "attempted to take corrective measures, but couldn't." "By the time our people began looking into what was going on, it was over," he told the Chicago Tribune. WTTW was able to find copies of the hijacker's telecast with the help of Doctor Who fans who had been taping the show.

 

 

WTTW and WGN-TV joined HBO (which had a similar incident occur 19 months earlier) as victims of broadcast signal intrusion. The Max Headroom incident made national headlines and was reported on the CBS Evening News the next day. WTTW received numerous phone calls from viewers who wondered what was occurring for the duration of the station being targeted.

 

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. To this day,it still remains as the most remembered television highjacking. And briefly,on September 9th, 2010, a clip of the second Max Headroom incident appeared during a highjacking of Cartoon Network.

 

 

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sM7Q1WiepoQ

 

Edited by KeybladeLordSora

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
Sign in to follow this  

×
×
  • Create New...