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Experts have said that the intrusion required extensive technical expertise and "a significant amount of 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. 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.
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WTTW received numerous phone calls from viewers who wondered what had occurred. "By the time our people began looking into what was going on, it was over," said Yocom. According to station spokesman Anders Yocom, technicians monitoring the transmission from WTTW headquarters "attempted to take corrective measures, but couldn't." Air director Paul Rizzo recalled that "as the content got weirder we got increasingly stressed out about our inability to do anything about it." The pirate broadcast ended when the hijackers unilaterally ended their transmission. Technicians at WTTW's studios could not counteract the signal takeover because there were no engineers on duty at that hour at the Sears Tower, where the station's broadcast tower was located. 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 (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. 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 (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.
#MAX HEADROOM TV HIJACK 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 TV HIJACK 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". 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. 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 member station 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 independent TV station 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 a corrugated metal panel swiveling in the background to mimic Max Headroom's geometric background effect.