On November 22, 1987 at 11:15 p.m., Dr. Who fans tuned in to WTTW11 in Chicago were treated to one of the most bizarre occurences in television history: The original broadcast faded out and was replaced by video of an anonymous signal hijacker donning a mask bearing the likeness of TV character Max Headroom. After a minute and a half of garbled rambling, the hacker faded out and the Dr. Who broadcast resumed.
The thinking is that the hijacker was either on the roof of a building near the Sears Tower (where WTTW broadcasts from) or had access to a very high-powered ground-based transmitter. To this day he hasn’t been caught. Fellow video pirate Captain Midnight, however, was not so fortunate.
And now back to our regularly scheduled program…the tape of the original Max Headroom incident from 11/22/87. And here’s a textfile dated 12/20/87 with some technical details of the hack.
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22 Nov 2007 at 11:11 pm
That’s some crazy stuff…
23 Nov 2007 at 7:26 pm
Weird!
14 Dec 2007 at 9:22 am
[…] month, my buddy Tim Spangler celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Max Headroom incident on Chicago […]