This is a story about the infamous Max Headroom pirate incident that was witnessed by Dr. Who fans on November 22, 1987 in Chicago, Illinois. First, our question to sci-fi nerds: If you were settled in for the night with your bag of Doritos to watch Dr. Who
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In the business, the Max Headroom pirate signal was called a “broadcast signal intrusion.” We call it a nice TV hack. Within a few hours, 2 TV stations had their signals hijacked; the guy who did it was never identified or caught!
The first Max Headroom pirate incident took place on WGN (channel 9), during the 9:00 news. As reported:
The station’s signal was interrupted for about half a minute by a video of a person wearing a Max Headroom mask, standing in front of a swaying sheet of corrugated metal, which imitated the background effect in the Max Headroom TV and movie appearances. There was no audio, only a buzzing noise. The hijack was stopped after an engineer at WGN switched the modulation of their studio link to the John Hancock Center transmitter. Reporter Dan Roan said: “Well, if you’re wondering what happened, so am I.”
Later, around 11:15pm, a broadcast of Doctor Who on PBS station WTTW was hijacked – this time, Max Headroom had a few words for his audience:
Haha! Our jokester pirate gets in a jab at Chuck Swirsky, Pepsi Coke (the product peddled by Max Headroom), WGN (“World’s Greatest Newspaper”), and Clutch Cargo
A television signal would not be intentionally hacked again until February, 2009, where Comcast customers in Tucson had their Super Bowl game interrupted by a porn clip.
On a related note, the Max Headroom TV Series
