The Max Headroom pirating incident was a television signal hijacking in Chicago, Illinois on the evening of November 22, 1987; it is an example of what is known in the television business as broadcast signal intrusion. The hijacker was successful in interrupting two television stations within 3 hours; and, as of 2007, neither he nor his accomplices have been found or even identified.
WGN-TV 9
The first occurrence of the signal hijack took place during WGN-TV's News at Nine. During Bears highlights in the sports report, the signal was interrupted by a video of a person wearing a Max Headroom mask[1], standing or sitting in front of a swaying sheet of corrugated metal imitating the background effect in the Max Headroom New Coke commercial. There was no audio. The hijack was stopped after only 20 seconds when WGN switched the modulation of their studio link to the John Hancock Center broadcast.[2]
The incident left sports reporter Dan Roan flustered, saying, "Well, if you're wondering what happened, so am I."[2]
WTTW 11
Later that night, around 11:15 p.m., during a broadcast of the Doctor Who episode "Horror of Fang Rock", PBS station WTTW had its station's signal hijacked using the same video that was broadcast during the WGN-TV hijack, but this time there was garbled audio.[1] The person in the Max Headroom mask appeared, as before, this time saying, "That does it. He's a freakin' nerd," before laughing and jeering, "Yeah, I think I'm better than Chuck Swirsky. Freakin' liberal.".[2]
The pirate continued to utter strange phrases, including Coca-Cola's advertizing slogan "Catch the Wave" while holding a Pepsi can (Max Headroom was a Coke spokesperson at the time), saying "Your love is fading", humming the theme song to Clutch Cargo, and stating that he had "made a giant masterpiece for all the greatest world newspaper nerds" — the call letters WGN are an abbreviation for "World's Greatest Newspaper", in reference to the Tribune Company's Chicago Tribune. He then held up a glove, said that his "brother is wearing the other one", and put the glove on, but took it off because, he said, that it's dirty. The picture then cuts to the person undressed below the waist and being spanked with a flyswatter by an unknown person, screaming and saying, "They're coming to get me!" and "Come get me, bitch!". The transmission blacked out and cut off, and the hijack was over after about 90 seconds.[2]
