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Max Headroom Pirate TV Broadcast (1987)

MrRING

MrRING

Android Futureman
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What about the infamous tv prank involving Max Headroom being spanked on tv?

http://www.tvparty.com/unseenf.html

Hackers Hold Chicago
In The Grip Of Terror! (well...)

On Nov. 22, 1987, video hackers managed to override the Chicago PBS station's broadcast of 'Dr. Who' for 90 seconds and replace it with a signal beamed from their secret location. Drunk with mad power, the dastardly duo also hacked into a major Chicago commercial station that night for a several moments.

With the ability to control one of the world's largest broadcast markets now firmly in their grasp, what diabolical message would they send? Were they terrorists with a Hell-bent message? Or was this a people's uprising, an attempt take back the airwaves from the purveyor's of lowest common denominator entertainment - perhaps sparking a return to the great dramatic anthology shows of the fifties, or the whimsical but wholesome sitcoms of the sixties?

Instead, what Chicagoans were treated to was some dork wearing a Max Headroom mask dropping his pants and getting a spanking from his accomplice (also masked). All the while, the camera panned wildly about, exposing a plain corrugated metal background. It was probably shot in someone's garage, but then, in all fairness, Bill Gates started that way.

This incident made the national news but the perpetrators were never caught in spite of an FBI investigation. You have to admire the nerve of these guys - true it wasn't Shakespeare, but the networks had a hard time filling the airwaves when THEY first got started.

Of course, we all know if the ratings had been good for the 'Show Me Your Ass And I'll Paddle It' show, it would still be on today in Chicago. In national syndication.

At the very least, the PBS station should air this during pledge breaks...
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MrRING said:
What about the infamous tv prank involving Max Headroom being spanked on tv?
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It's now on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Xx5Mx2LJzs

Reaction seems split between those who find it funny and those who find it scary (must have given a few Doctor who fans a jolt at any rate!). These guys were never caught, so we'll never know how they did it. Watch it again and try and make out what he's saying; I'm sure at one point he's shouting "Oooh my piles!" and what is the song he's singing? Anyone recognise it?
 
gncxx said:
MrRING said:
What about the infamous tv prank involving Max Headroom being spanked on tv?
Click to expand...

It's now on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Xx5Mx2LJzs

Reaction seems split between those who find it funny and those who find it scary (must have given a few Doctor who fans a jolt at any rate!). These guys were never caught, so we'll never know how they did it. Watch it again and try and make out what he's saying; I'm sure at one point he's shouting "Oooh my piles!" and what is the song he's singing? Anyone recognise it?
Click to expand...

Not heard of this before. Wow!

The technical know-how involved in doing that (on all levels - the hijacking, chroma key and, er, mask making et al) must have took some doing. It says students - but maybe a rival TV station was involved perhaps?
 
Seeing as how two stations were affected with this, and that it never happened again as far as I know, amateur enthusiasts might well be the culprits. If only they'd have had the sound sorted we might have worked out what their point was, presuming it wasn't dada-ist gibberish.

As least it wasn't a blipvert...
 
gncxx said:
Seeing as how two stations were affected with this, and that it never happened again as far as I know, amateur enthusiasts might well be the culprits. If only they'd have had the sound sorted we might have worked out what their point was, presuming it wasn't dada-ist gibberish.
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Wikipedia now have a page for the Max Headroom pirate incident:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headro ... g_incident

And not only that, but there's a translation of what the pirate is saying! Someone has good hearing. Doesn't make any sense, though. I wonder how scripted it was?
 
I don't know if this has been mentioned on here before, but I just recently heard about it. Pretty bizarre!
 
It seems clear enough to me. Teen-agers (at least two, possibly three) with some camera equipment, a book from Loompanics telling them how to hijack a station, and a stash of weed. I suspect that the stash and the book both belonged to the referenced brother, who was deeply embarrassed when his carefully-laid plans for a really good hijack were suborned on the weed-induced whim of a moment, but was able to cover his sibling's tracks by hustling a bit.

I miss Loompanics. More to the point, I missed out on their going-out-of-business sale. 'Cause y'know, I didn't have enough books on miscellaneous subjects I might or might not ever need to reference for a story or an RPG. :roll:
 
A little follow up on the Max Headroom pirate broadcast, I've been watching the box set of the 80s show and there's an episode about TV piracy in it. Coincidence? The characters committing the crime in the show are a bunch of kids with superpowered technological skills, so maybe the actual pirates saw that and were inspired?

Not that they wouldn't have done it anyway, but it could have pointed them in their specific artistic direction.
 
Good article here about the apparently infamous Max Headroom hack broadcast. I can't believe I'd never heard of it before! It certainly is more creepy than jokey, and I quite like the fact that it's still a mystery after all this time.
The Mystery of the Creepiest Television Hack
By Chris Knittel

Right up until 9:14 PM on November 22nd, 1987, what appeared on Chicago's television sets was somewhat normal: entertainment, news, game shows. That night, as usual, Dan Roan, a popular local sportscaster on Channel 9's Nine O'Clock News, was narrating highlights of the Bears’ victory over the Detroit Lions. And then, suddenly and without warning, the signal flickered up and out into darkness.

In the control room of WGN-TV, the technicians on duty stared blankly at their screens. It was from their studio, located at Bradley Place in the north of the city, that the network broadcasted its microwave transmission to an antenna at the top of the 100-story John Hancock tower, seven miles away, and then out to tens of thousands of viewers. Time seemed to slow to a trickle as they watched that signal get hijacked.

A squat, suited figure sputtered into being, and bounced around maniacally. Wearing a ghoulish rubbery mask with sunglasses and a frozen grin, the mysterious intruder looked like a cross between Richard Nixon and the Joker. Static hissed through the signal; behind him, a slab of corrugated metal spun hypnotically. This was not part of the regularly scheduled broadcast.

Finally someone switched the uplink frequencies, and the studio zapped back to the screen. There was Roan, at his desk in the studio, smiling at the camera, dumbfounded.

“Well, if you're wondering what’s happened,” he said, chuckling nervously, “so am I."

[etc]
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Source
 
The Headroom '87 Hack

The Mystery of the Creepiest Television Hack
November 25, 2013 // 12:45 PM EST
WRITTEN BY CHRIS KNITTEL

Right up until 9:14 PM on November 22nd, 1987, what appeared on Chicago's television sets was somewhat normal: entertainment, news, game shows.

That night, as usual, Dan Roan, a popular local sportscaster on Channel 9's Nine O'Clock News, was narrating highlights of the Bears' victory over the Detroit Lions. And then, suddenly and without warning, the signal flickered up and out into darkness.

In the control room of WGN-TV, the technicians on duty stared blankly at their screens. It was from their studio, located at Bradley Place in the north of the city, that the network broadcasted its microwave transmission to an antenna at the top of the 100-story John Hancock tower, seven miles away, and then out to tens of thousands of viewers. Time seemed to slow to a trickle as they watched that signal get hijacked.

A squat, suited figure sputtered into being, and bounced around maniacally. Wearing a ghoulish rubbery mask with sunglasses and a frozen grin, the mysterious intruder looked like a cross between Richard Nixon and the Joker. Static hissed through the signal; behind him, a slab of corrugated metal spun hypnotically. This was not part of the regularly scheduled broadcast.

Finally someone switched the uplink frequencies, and the studio zapped back to the screen. There was Roan, at his desk in the studio, smiling at the camera, dumbfounded.

"Well, if you're wondering what’s happened," he said, chuckling nervously, "so am I."
Click to expand...

Continued at length:
motherboard.vice.com/read/headroom-hacker

Link is dead. The full article can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20131228214438/https://motherboard.vice.com/blog/headroom-hacker
 
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Funny how often the counterfeit Max comes up on this board. And the culprits are still at large!
 
A short doc about the Max Headroom interruption:

Spoiler: still unsolved.
 
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Chicago looks back on 30 years of that Max Headroom hack-

Here, shown publicly in its entirety for the first time in 30 years, is the complete broadcast of the *initial* "Max Headroom Incident" that plagued the sports report that aired within The Nine O'Clock News on WGN Channel 9 one Sunday evening in late November 1987.
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30 years later, Max Headroom hijack mystery remains unsolved
It went on for 25 long and painful seconds until the engineers could switch the microwave path back to local programming.

“I looked over at the monitor and this image, I could tell it wasn’t a sports highlight,” Jon Walgren, former WGN floor director, said.

“We got a laugh out of it. We went home and woke up to the newspapers and it was a pretty big deal,” Roan said.
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http://wgntv.com/2017/11/22/30-years-later-max-headroom-hijack-mystery-remains-unsolved/
WTTW’s incident took place two hours later on the very same night. While devoted “Dr. Who” fans sat and watched late night or slept and taped their favorite sci-fi show, the same masked man blurted a bunch of inaudible gibberish and got smacked with a flyswatter on his bare behind. The incident lasted closer to two minutes.

The WTTW version had some sound. And with great difficulty, under all the noise, you could hear the Max Headroom imposter mention the name of Chuck Swirsky— a WGN Radio guy who filled in for Roan on the sports desk from time to time.

“My phone started exploding. It was a Sunday night and I had no clue what was going on so it was a shock,” Swirsky said. “I was completely baffled. Why me? Why insert ‘Chuck Swirsky’ into this thing? I still don’t understand.”
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Al Skierkiewicz has been a broadcast maintenance engineer at WTTW since 1973. He helped the FCC investigate back then.

“If you were to draw a line in between both of our studio facilities, that line would end up somewhere between the Sears Tower and John Hancock downtown,” Skierkiewicz said. “Somebody could essentially see both of our transmit facilities at Sears and Hancock from the same location.”
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30 Years Later, Notorious ‘Max Headroom Incident’ Remains a Mystery
It was Nov. 22, 1987—a Sunday night—and “Doctor Who” fans had just settled in to watch a rerun of the episode “Horror at Fang Rock.” Suddenly, the Doctor was replaced by Max Headroom—not the 1980s comedy character Max Headroom, but a guy in a mask ranting through garbled audio.

The WTTW signal had been hijacked.

“As it went on it got stranger and stranger,” remembers “Doctor Who” fan Gary Zielinski. Indeed, toward the end of the 90-second signal, the imposter exposed his bare bottom to an accomplice who spanked him with a fly swatter.
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http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2017...torious-max-headroom-incident-remains-mystery

Be sure to click the last link for a new 5 minute news item. And look out for the irate Dr Who Fan.
 
sherbetbizarre said:
Chicago looks back on 30 years of that Max Headroom hack-
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I seem to remember having recentiy read a comprehensive and persuasive explanation regarding this incident- almost certainly mediated via this forum. Or was it from another source?
 
Yithian said:
I'm not denying it, but this was 1987--the pool was far smaller, and the details of the case present other parameters that could provide clues for identification.
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there is a guy that came out in social media a while ago and said that he knew who was behind it, of course he din't tell his names but the story he told is very plausible and likely
 
humanoidlord said:
there is a guy that came out in social media a while ago and said that he knew who was behind it, of course he din't tell his names but the story he told is very plausible and likely
Click to expand...

Care to share? One of the most compelling things about this is the utter mystery of who was behind it, even decades later. No one admitted it, no one apparently knew who it was. I'm even sceptical about "some bloke on the internet knows" admissions.
 
I remember seeing news stories quoting the FCC or whoever was in charge of the investigation, saying they were getting close to solving the case. As I recall, at the time there were very few people with access to the technology to pull it off. It wasn't just some simple hack that hadn't been done before. There was quite a lot to it. Well beyond some pranksters fooling around with amateur radio equipment or anything like that.

Watch this:

I know who DB Cooper was, but I'm not telling.

See how easy that was?
 
GNC said:
Care to share? One of the most compelling things about this is the utter mystery of who was behind it, even decades later. No one admitted it, no one apparently knew who it was. I'm even sceptical about "some bloke on the internet knows" admissions.
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its on this article that was already posted here:
motherboard.vice.com/blog/headroom-hacker
Link is dead. See updated access info in post #10.
 
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humanoidlord said:
there is a guy that came out in social media a while ago and said that he knew who was behind it, of course he din't tell his names but the story he told is very plausible and likely
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i recall going from board to board chasing this down a few years back, an individual had been pinpointed and described, in sufficient detail for those who were experts in the field to identify, but wasnt quite named ... explanation went into detail about how itd been executed and location of the broadcast site ... i first came across this weirdness in 1991 in a book by, i think, jack barth which i read while driving around the US delivering cars (in the good old days of autodriveaway)
 
Might you be referring to this Reddit item from circa 2011 (and updated circa 2013)?

I believe I know who was behind the "Max Headroom Incident" that occurred on Chicago TV in 1987. ...
Post by u/bpoag in 'Ask Me Anything'
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This guy claims he knew a pair of brothers who seemed to fit the on-screen performance, the 'script', and the tech knowledge requirements.

In a later posting, crica 2015:

New developments in the Max Headroom Incident mystery!
Post by u/bpoag in 'Unsolved Mysteries'
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... the same guy updated his prior piece by claiming:

- The two brothers couldn't have been the Max Headroom hackers, and
- Subsequent info had convinced him it was an 'inside job' (involving TV tech professionals, perhaps from one or the other of the TV stations that were hacked).
 
possibly, can you link to the reddits ?

(ps. did you post delete and repost the above, because i got a notification, but the thread wasnt updated ... weirdly when i checked my email archive the notification wasnt there, put it down to tiredness ... 5 minutes later i got another, and theres your update)
 
Yes - I had to kill the first attempt because the URL's were triggering an excessive dump. Here are the URL's, broken into 2 parts to prevent the auto-dump.

https://www.

reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/eeb6e/i_believe_i_know_who_was_behind_the_max_headroom/


https://www.

reddit.com/r/UnsolvedMysteries/comments/3oaxi5/new_developments_in_the_max_headroom_incident/
 
EnolaGaia said:
Might you be referring to this Reddit item from circa 2011 (and updated circa 2013)?


This guy claims he knew a pair of brothers who seemed to fit the on-screen performance, the 'script', and the tech knowledge requirements.

In a later posting, crica 2015:


... the same guy updated his prior piece by claiming:

- The two brothers couldn't have been the Max Headroom hackers, and
- Subsequent info had convinced him it was an 'inside job' (involving TV tech professionals, perhaps from one or the other of the TV stations that were hacked).
Click to expand...
really? the timing is too weird to be a coincidence, and if it was a inside job, how did nobody find the man already?
 
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