It is some incredible sketchy and creepy footage and even if it was meant to be a joke there just seems like there’s a sinister meaning behind all of it. If you are able to watch the video of the hijacking it is available on YouTube and I highly recommend.
#Max headroom hijacking tv#
Because of this in particular a lot of people suspected that it was just a couple of kids looking for a fun prank, however how would a bunch of kids be able to pull off a hijacking of a tv station not once but twice?Īfter the engineers at WGN were able to change the frequency of the signal and the sports segment returned, WGN sports anchor Dan Roan said, “Well, if you’re wondering what’s happened, so am I.” The end of the video shows the person showing their butt being spanked by a woman with a flyswatter. The person also calls WGN sportscaster Chuck Swirsky a “frickin’ liberal” and held up a middle finger. The person wearing the mask and costume begins talking and making typical Max Headroom references. The same person or persons responsible for the hijacking managed to do it a second time, 2 hours later around 11:20 pm during a Doctor Who episode, this time lasting for 90 seconds. According to viewers their screens went black for about 15 seconds before the person masked as Max Headroom came on the screen. The first hijacking happened during a sports segment of WGN-TV’s 9 pm news broadcast and lasted for a total of 25 seconds. This unknown person wearing the Max Headroom mask and costume has never been identified.ĭuring the hijacking you can see this mysterious person moving around a geometric background effect with distorted audio that is quite hard to make out but you can hear a buzzing noise. Max Headroom was a popular fictional character first introduced in 1985 known for his electronic voice. On the night of Novema television show was being broadcast on it’s regular station in Chicago, Illinois when it was hijacked by a mysterious video of a person wearing a Max Headroom mask and costume.
There’s just something extremely unsettling about this entire mystery even though no one was hurt in the process.
The piece was commissioned by IRCAM, ProQuartet, Milano Musica and Warsaw Autumn.This may be one of the creepiest true crime stories I share on this blog and I’m not sure why. The digital elaboration of the instruments is hugely inspired by the modulation technology once commonly used – and in part still used today – in TV and radio broadcasting. The 1987 Max Headroom Broadcast Incident was written for a prepared string quartet, “augmented” with the use of transducers. The transmission then blacked out for a few seconds before resuming the Doctor Who episode in progress.
#Max headroom hijacking series#
He then tossed the can out of sight, presented his middle finger, sang an excerpt of “I’m losing you” (a 1966 Motown hit recorded by the Temptations), hummed the theme song of Clutch Cargo (a clumsily-animated television series of the 60s). The man started to moan, scream and laugh, uttering various random phrases (the audio was distorted and crackling), including New Coke's advertising slogan "Catch the Wave" while holding a Pepsi can (Max Headroom was a Coca-Cola spokesperson at the time). an episode of the British TV-Series Doctor Who was suddenly interrupted by television static, after which an unidentified man wearing a Max Headroom mask and sunglasses appeared. The pirate broadcast, which lasted 90 endless seconds, featured an individual disguised as Max Headroom (a sci-fi computer-generated television character quite popular in the 80s, coming from dystopian near-future dominated by television and large corporations).Īround 11:15 p.m. The signal pirates, whose identities were never found, succeeded in getting their broadcast intruded onto WTTW (a local Public Broadcasting Service television station). 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. Here’s an excerpt from the composer’s introduction, in which he recalls the famed television signal hijacking that occurred 30 years ago in the United States. The piece, dedicated to Fausto Romitelli, is a tribute to obsolete (or soon to-be-obsolete) technology and a dark and dreary future where 1980s cyberpunk sci-fi media rules the roost. Mauro Lanza’s latest composition The 1987 Max Headroom Broadcast Incident for “augmented” string quartet will be making its world premiere on May 15 at the 'Friche la Belle de Mai Festival' in Marseille, France.
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