The Max Headroom Incident: In 1987 someone interrupted the broadcast of a television station in Chicago. The first interruption was during the news, the second was during a showing of Dr. Who. What was broadcast was exceedingly mysterious, a touch scary, and has never been resolved.
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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. After a brief and only partially successful attempt to break into the signal of intended target of WGN-TV, the signal pirates, whose identities were never found, succeeded in getting their broadcast intruded onto WTTW during an episode of the Doctor Who serial “Horror of Fang Rock.” The pirate broadcast, which lasted 90 seconds and was pre-recorded on videotape, featured an individual disguised as television character Max Headroom parodying WGN and television in general. The incident made national headlines and the people responsible have never been identified. This is the best known broadcast hijacking, due to the oddity, the same people interrupting two TV stations, and utilizing the mask of a famous TV character in the intrusion. The people behind the famous incident are still unknown.
Whoever did that is likely a father now, cursed with the inability to reveal it was him otherwise the mystery would be dead.
They were elite
Dan Roan was doing the sports on WGN when it happened – we were watching the broadcast. All of a sudden it’s some guy in a Max Headroom mask with weirdly distorted audio. Was only about 15 seconds and then Roan came back with a puzzled look. He said, well I don’t know what *that* was, and he kept going with the sports.
Only heard about Dr Who the next day
Legends, we need more of this today
Max Headroom? That wierd ai thing that was on MTV back in the day?
So some geeks pranked a television channel at a time when that sort of technical knowledge was less common among civilians. Not exactly a mind boggling mystery.
this is a great little whodunnit. They have a pretty good idea, but no evidence
Check out “The Why Files” on YouTube, he goes over the whole thing
heh, the ones who did it, they could be reading this thread right now
EDIT: its not me lol
fsociety
My brother worked for Coke at the time and was able to snag me a sweet Max Headroom promotional skateboard.
This was so unlike Chicago. It happened and nobody ever copped to it. Normally if something like this happened, the person would be bragging to everyone. Uncharacteristic. I blame an outsider.
I LOVE Max Headroom.
Always hope for a big reveal of who did it. No risk of legal repercussions at this point, but they clearly enjoy it staying a mystery. None the less, these things always make me so nostalgic for television of the past. I live in an area that was the wild west for public access television and as a teenager of the 90’s, I was all for the madness I got to enjoy late at night. Sure, we have YouTube now, but there’s just no way to replicate the insanity that was broadcasting over the airwaves back then.
They Live
I think we all know it was DB Cooper.
You have Dr. Who, then you have WHO was that?
That last bit, it has never been resolved, is the most shocking part to me. They knew what they were doing, it seems! The whole thing is bizarre and a very quirky footnote on TV history.
And the worst part is, they interrupted a great episode of *Doctor Who*! 🙁
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