I recently stumbled accross this, and I wanted to see if anyone in the Chicago area had heard of this, saw it live or had any further informaiton on it. Any rumors on who actuallly did this or why? The video is just plain… bizzare. Almost reminds me of an early DEVO video.
One of the authors of an article on the incident indicated that they thought the person on the video was either drunk or high, but while it seems disjointed, it seems like the person was trying to convey something. It doesn’t seem totally off the cuff (the max headroom background, the pepsi can for the coke ad, etc) and there was a second person at least involved at the end. And to take over the signal twice in one night, the perpatrators seem to be highly motivated.
It just struck me as totally wierd in a way that most of the other TV pirating incidents are not, as they seemed to be motivated by some cause.
I hadn’t seen it. I was living here in Tucson at the time and it made national headlines. Although WGN was available on the cable back then, the station was able to switch transmitters within a few seconds. I did see a few seconds of it when “Max” was having his butt swatted. Now that I’ve seen the whole clip, it seems very surreal.
I wasn’t in Chicago at the time, or I would have seen this (Tom Baker is my favorite Doctor). But I did see the HBO break-in of “The Falcon and the Snowman”. The quality was great. Actually the fact that the quality was so great was what enabled the Feds to track him down. It took a very big dish and a lot of power to over-ride HBO’s crown jewel. The thing about the Chicago over-ride is that it wasn’t satellite. It had tho be a guy hacking into their microwave feed from their studios to their transmitter on the Sears Tower or Hancock.
I’ve heard of this incident, although, not living in Chicago and being two in 1987, I didn’t see it. As someone pointed out, the first words the Doctor says after “Max” runs away are “as far as I can tell, a massive electric shock- he died instantly.” Did the Doctor kill Max Headroom?
There was also an audio-only hijacking in the UK in 1977, where an alien named Vrillon told viewers to get rid of all weapons for world peace. Or something.
I’m fascinated by this incident and the concept of broadcast interruptions in general – it creeps. me. out. I think what gives me the oogies in this incident is the combo of the mask, the almost (but not quite) nonsensical raving, and the swaying. The use of the dildo or whatever that is doesn’t help either.
What gets me is that someone can accomplish something so difficult, rare and ambitious without being caught out eventually – I mean, it’s been twenty years and still no hints of who ‘Max Headroom’ was! How do you not brag about this to someone? Admittedly the potential for punishment is a significant factor in keeping the accomplishment to yourself, as the fine is something like $100K, but still. If you’re weird, inane and attention-whorish enough to perpetrate a prank of this order of magnitude, seems like you’d be busting to reveal your brilliance to the world eventually.
ARGH! It’s frustrating. I like my mysteries to be solved eventually, thankyouverymuch.
This is totally the way I felt when I first saw it. It just seemed so unsettleingly bizzarre that there are two people who are technologically savvy and organized enough to pull this off that are also so appearently off thier rocker as well.
These types of events in general seem to differ for me from something like a website hacking in that hacing something, from an equipment perspective, rarely involves anything more than what most of us have in our house - a PC.
I would imagine the requirements to interrupt a microwave signal from a studio to a transmission tower is a bit more involved.