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20 Years Ago Tonight, 'Max Headroom' the Video Pirate Took Over Chicago's Airwaves
Posted by Adam Frucci at 4:55 AM on November 23, 2007
20 years ago today, during a broadcast of a Dr. Who episode on WTTW channel 11 in Chicago, a video pirate took over the airwaves dressed as Max Headroom (remember him?). Wearing a mask and standing in front of a moving background, the video pirate rambled for a couple minutes in a tough-to-understand voice and then voluntarily went off the air. Who was this prankster, and what was he trying to accomplish?
Good question. No one knows who he was or what the point of the broadcasts were (it was actually the second of the evening, with the first being a shorter clip of the same video broadcast during the evening news on a different channel). It's not like there was a message really, either. The ramblings are pretty tough to make out, and when you do they don't make a whole lot of sense.
That's not to say that it was brushed off as not that big a deal; the FCC actually launched an investigation trying to figure out just who this Max Headroom character was to no avail.
How exactly did he do it? An article from the November 24, 1987 Chicago Sun-Times explains it thusly:
"It's pretty apparent it was local," said Robert Strutzel, WGN director of engineering. Strutzel explained that the intrusions could have come from a high-rise apartment or a roof between the WGN transmitter on the Northwest Side at 2501 W. Bradley and its antenna atop the Hancock Building.You've gotta assume that it'd be next to impossible to do something like this today with cable and satellite companies controlling how people get their TV in most places, but it could probably still be done to people getting stations over the air in major metropolitan areas. You'd just hope if someone did it today they'd pick a costume with more cultural staying power, no? [TNS via Fark]"It's not the kind of thing that's done by somebody in his basement," Strutzel said. "It's sophisticated microwave equipment at pretty high power levels to overcome our installation. And the room for error is very small."
Commercial-grade equipment of this sort would cost around $25,000 and could be carried in a few suitcases, he said - or the equipment could be rented.
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
sinz
Posted 3:16 PM 22/11/07
I'd be interested to see if someone could run a filter over the audio to reduce the distortion and get it back to his original voice so we could hear what he is saying. Or does someone have a transcript?
sinz
ANoel
Posted 3:05 PM 22/11/07
@wysiwyg:
Works!
Spanks very much Mr. Get.
ANoel
calaverasgrandes
Posted 2:52 PM 22/11/07
I heard about it back when it happened but never saw it until now. (thanks wysiwyg and kvasi)
What a nutjob, very subgenius. Yes pirate TV is an order of Magnitude more difficult than pirate radio. Not only do you have to be able to get in the line of sight for the microwave receiver, but you need to be on the right carrier. Makes me wonder if his voice is intentionally ring-modded or if that is a byproduct of manipulating the signal to suit the carrier he was interupting. Still, not bad video quality and lighting is actually fairly even. Has to be an inside job by a techie at one of the stations. Or somebody who was recently let go?
calaverasgrandes
Bodypainter
Posted 2:20 PM 22/11/07
i liked the song with art of noise: paranoimia!
Bodypainter
wysiwyg
Posted 2:18 PM 22/11/07
Damn, kvasi beat me. :P
wysiwyg
wysiwyg
Posted 2:17 PM 22/11/07
Video is broken, here's a working one in YouTube:
[www.youtube.com]
wysiwyg
kvasi
Posted 2:12 PM 22/11/07
It's on YouTube (what isn't?): [youtube.com]
kvasi
strider_mt2k
Posted 2:00 PM 22/11/07
Yeah link not working here either.
(lighting incense to server gods)
strider_mt2k
BLAKELEY
Posted 1:54 PM 22/11/07
Video is broken Frucci... and I don't even see it in the bin, what's up?
BLAKELEY
infmom
Posted 1:48 PM 22/11/07
Aw, the guy was probably just a big fan of "Used Cars" and decided if it was good enough for Kurt Russell, it was good enough for him.
infmom
lolec
Posted 1:44 PM 22/11/07
Video isnt working for me.
lolec
strider_mt2k
Posted 1:40 PM 22/11/07
Classic hacker history.
The best part is that the Batmobile lost it's wheel and the Joker got away!
So to speak.
strider_mt2k
DeadWriter
Posted 1:32 PM 22/11/07
What is a costume with more cultural staying power?
I suppose today it would be Paris Hilton, but 20 years from now she will be just as dim and forgotten a symbol.
I thought the stunt it was brilliant. Then again, Max Hedroom was one of my favorite shows. Not because of the floating head, but because it was well written. It was a dark future where the difference between the haves and the have-nots is enormous, poverty is rampant, where biomedical ethics hadn't caught up with the genetic and medical practices, where identity theft was a worse crime than murder, and where a market driven economy had spiraled out of control and spent most of it's time worrying about what share holders thought.
I think the show will be one of the important texts of the last century. It was similar to the original Outer Limits, dealing with societal issues that were just over the horizon.
What I am saying is that Max Headroom is a little more culturally relevant than you think.
DeadWriter
jbhitter24
Posted 1:24 PM 22/11/07
video isn't working for me.
jbhitter24
pepe the king prawn
Posted 1:16 PM 22/11/07
i totally remember that happening. wow, i am totally old.
pepe the king prawn
Electroqueen
Posted 4:40 PM 22/11/07
Just the other day, on the empty channel 3, some fool broadcast a Zuma ripoff. It was in the Brooklyn area. Not sure if it was accidental or something.
Electroqueen
calaverasgrandes
Posted 4:33 PM 22/11/07
BTW what kind of nerd interupts DR.WHO Tom Baker era! No real nerd! (or maybe an unsympathetic trekkie)
Oh yeah and back then to do a color key like that you needed a switcher like a Grass Valley or at least one of the Sony's. Neither of which was cheap. I'm starting to think it was someone at an ad agency, I believe there are a lot of those in Chi-town. And the whole Pepsi thing?
calaverasgrandes
tin
Posted 4:27 PM 22/11/07
Thats pretty cool. From what that guy said, wouldve had to be a well planned hack.
tin
Jeff the Riffer
Posted 9:14 PM 22/11/07
Anyone remember Captain Midnight?
This sort of thing has actually happened a lot in American TV broadcast history. But it's pretty much always on small local channels and doesn't get a lot of attention.
Except every now and then when someone kills themselves on live TV.
Jeff the Riffer
madlogik
Posted 9:12 PM 22/11/07
source:
[labyrinth13.com]
madlogik
madlogik
Posted 9:12 PM 22/11/07
"That does it, he's a freakin' nerd"
"Yeah, I think I'm better than Chuck Swirsky."
"Freakin' liberal"
"Oh, Jesus."
(Distorted speech. Hijacker shows audience a Pepsi cola can)
"Yeah . . . catch the wave."
(Hijacker throws can away; distorted words and moaning)
"Your love is fading."
(Hijacker laughs, then begins to hum the theme song to the 1959 Clutch Cargo show)
"I stole CBS" (or possibly) "I stole some DX." (DX is a broadcast signal).
(Hijacker continues to hum Clutch Cargo theme)
"Oh, my piles."
(Hijacker laughs and moans)
"Oh, I just laid a giant masterpiece for all the greatest world's newspaper nerds."
(Hijacker laughs and moans; is seen putting an old glove or baseball mitt on his hand)
"My brother is wearing the other one, it's dirty."
(Pulls glove off and tosses it away. More distorted words. Pirate video then switches to scene of hijacker with his pants down, being spanked with a flyswatter by a disguised female).
"They're coming to get me!"
"Come get me, bitch."
(Hijacker screams)
"Oh, do it!"
(Hijacker screams)
Pirate broadcast ends and the Doctor Who show resumes with the words, "As far as I can tell, a massive electric shock, he died instantly!"
madlogik
Stacky Botrus
Posted 8:57 PM 22/11/07
SO how did MTV steal the concept? where is the history man :)
Stacky Botrus
girly
Posted 8:19 PM 22/11/07
@DeadWriter: I thought Headroom was kind of appropriate as well...
but the guy didn't do much useful with it, just juvenile...
girly
girly
Posted 8:17 PM 22/11/07
I found the video and it almost got me in trouble. There was no warning about the mooning thing one the site I found it at, and I had been letting my nephew watch it.
I am SO lucky he walked away before that...wouldn't have made my family too happy!
He already kept talking about it as it was, if he had seen that part, I'm sure I never would have heard the 'end' of it!
girly
Drewinfla
Posted 9:26 PM 22/11/07
I remember that I had just finished watching Mash YEAH I'M OLD
Drewinfla
bdkennedy1
Posted 11:53 PM 22/11/07
I didn't get to see it because I'm not a Who fan. But it was all over the news channels in Chicago the next day.
bdkennedy1
Skorpius
Posted 11:42 PM 22/11/07
I was watching that as it happened. Kind of freaked me out.
Skorpius
whiskey
Posted 1:40 AM 23/11/07
@calaverasgrandes: There was a Max Headroom animation for DOS, where he said that Pepsi drinkers are dweebs ... back then when them floppies where the big thing!
whiskey
Echophiliac
Posted 1:06 AM 23/11/07
Big hulking deal. In San Fransciso during prime time a year before that, Mark Pauline or some other member of Survival Research Laboratories interrupted the evening news with a vid of a woman being whipped over a track of people giggling.
Echophiliac
Darkest Daze
Posted 12:56 AM 23/11/07
What a complete waste of a good hijacking job.
Darkest Daze
sugardeath
Posted 2:15 AM 23/11/07
Oh my god. I've seen like one Max Headroom episode on TechTV or something a few years ago and thought it was pretty cool, but this was just fucking creepy. I don't think I can sleep now, honestly. I had to stop it after about ten seconds of the hijacker speaking.
Oh man.
sugardeath
Rusty_Shackleford
Posted 11:15 AM 23/11/07
That wasn't a Chroma Key. For one, most people today with top of the line keyers couldn't get a key that clean with an obviously overlit scene, and second, watch the light glare above the dudes head... it shifts. It's a moving piece of corrugated material. Let the debate begin! Or, who cares, really.
Rusty_Shackleford
Mondoz
Posted 11:40 AM 26/11/07
That's going to give me nightmares.
Mondoz