The woman begins dialing the number on screen when she’s interrupted by Max Headroom.
The hostess, drowned in makeup, is selling a diamond necklace with big, colorful graphics flashing on screen. It opens with a woman watching a show called Shop and Spree. Generally they did it in the early hours of the morning after the other stations signed off or played pre-recorded PSA stuff or whatever. Season 2, Episode 1 of The Max Headroom show is about television broadcast hijacking. They played stuff like punk, rap, or rave music. I was also the type to occasionally find a rare pirate radio station or two along the part of the dial where the college stations were. But didn't bother doing stuff like recording old shows that were watched for their campiness factor like Dr.
#Wgn max headroom tv#
The hacker played it off well.)Īt the time asked a friend or two that was a TV night-owl whether they saw that.
#Wgn max headroom Patch#
(Takes quite a few nerd skills to patch into a signal like that, and I was also a fan of the Max Headroom show. One Sunday night in November 1987, something very odd happened in the middle of the WGN nine oclock news in Chicago. But high-school age me thought the shit was funny as hell rather than scary. NEW: Rule 10 - Posts about crimes that are low-effort, or do not have a wider impact on the city, will be removed - more info here WGN Max Headroom signal intrusion 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. Rule 9: No Crowdsourcing or Political Advertising Rule 8: No Buying, Selling, Promoting, or Crowdfunding Rule 7: No Duplicate Posts or Pasted Articles 29 years ago today, WGN-TV, a Chicago TV station, had its nightly news broadcast interrupted by footage of unknown persons holding a mask of TV character Max. Earlier the same joker had interrupted WGN-Channel 9s highlights of the Bears game with the ghost of Max Headroom. Who watched Max Headroom, the high-tech TV caricature, gabbling unintelligibly and being spanked on his bare behind with a fly swatter. Rule 5: No Editorialized or Sensationalized News Titles For 88 seconds- it must have seemed much longer -fans of Dr. The people responsible have never been identified.Rule 3: Photo & Video Posts Only Allowed Fri-Sun He then held up a Michael Jackson glove and said, “My brother is wearing the other one”, then put the glove on and continued, “But it’s dirty! It’s like you got bloodstains on it!” He then removed the glove and threw it down.įor Act 3, the picture cut to a man and his bare butt as he held the now-removed Max Headroom mask up to the camera and screamed “They’re coming to get me!” as a woman in a French maid outfit then proceeded to spank his bare ass with a flyswatter while screaming “Bend over, bitch!” He also made some fart noises and stated he had “made a giant masterpiece for all the greatest world newspaper nerds”. The show was interrupted by static and the for one minute and twenty-two seconds, someone in a Max Headroom mask screamed, laughed, moaned, called WGN’s Chuck Swirsky a “fricking Liberal” and blurted out random phrases like New Coke’s slogan “Catch the Wave” while holding a Pepsi can.Īfter crushing the Pepsi can, he tossed it off screen, flipped off the camera, grabbed the Pepsi can, sang “Your Love Is Fading’ and begun humming the Clutch Cargo theme song. Later in the night at 11:15 PM the same person or persons hijacked the broadcast signal Chicago PBS affiliate WTTW-11 during a broadcast of Doctor Who. Unlike the earlier hijack, which was barely intelligible, the next one was much more successful. After gaining control of the broadcast again, all Dan Roan could say was “Well, if you’re wondering what’s happened, so am I.” I remember me and my (at the time) best friend Brett were finishing our case notes in the lecture hall. However, I remember I was on exchange to Chicago in November 1987. Presently, I have a degree in Psychology. There was no audio other than a buzzing noise and the technicians at WGN were quickly able to stop the hijack by switching the frequency of their studio link. It must have been around November in 1987.
The screen went black for 15 seconds and then returned with a mysterious person wearing a Max Headroom mask. On the evening of November 22nd, 1987 Max Headroom hijacked two TV stations in Chicago.Īt approximately 9:15 PM, during Nine O’Clock News with Dan Roan on WGN-TV Channel 9, the broadcast signal was hijacked as he narrated highlights of the Bears victory over the Lions.