The image faded briefly into static, and then viewers were returned to the Doctor Who broadcast after a total interruption of about 90 seconds. The (unworn) Max Headroom mask 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. 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. He also feigned defecation 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.
MAX HEADROOM HIJACKING SERIES
"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"). The figure then ran through a series of quick comments and song snippets interspersed with excited noises and exclamations. The masked figure made a comment about "nerds", apparently called WGN sportscaster Chuck Swirsky a "frickin' 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 held up a middle finger inside what appeared to be a hollowed-out dildo. The culprit was the same Max Headroom impersonator, this time speaking with distorted audio.
MAX HEADROOM HIJACKING SERIAL
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". WTTWįile:Max Headroom broadcast intrusion.webm Roan then proceeded to restart his report of the day's Chicago Bears game, which had been interrupted by the intrusion. 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". 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 atop the John Hancock Center.
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 first intrusion took place during the sports segment of WGN-TV's The Nine O'Clock News. īoth Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion incidents took place on local Chicago television stations on the night of Sunday, November 22, 1987.įile:WGN-TV 'Max Headroom' Incident" (1987).webm The video ended with the person's exposed buttocks being spanked by a woman with a flyswatter before normal programming resumed.ĭespite an FCC investigation and decades of speculation, the culprits were never caught and have not been positively identified.
MAX HEADROOM HIJACKING TV
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 second incident occurred around two hours later during PBS affiliate WTTW's broadcast of Doctor Who and lasted for about 90 seconds. During this intrusion, the person in the mask swayed erratically and was accompanied by a strange buzzing noise. The first incident took place during the sports segment of WGN-TV's 9:00 p.m. The Max Headroom signal hijacking occurred on the night of November 22, 1987, when the television broadcasts 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 with a corrugated metal panel swiveling in the background to mimic Max Headroom's geometric background effect. The unidentified hijacker dressed to resemble Max Headroom in the pirate broadcast