Unsolved Max Headroom TV broadcast intrusion

[Silent Alarm]

In 1987, two television broadcasts were interrupted. The first occurred during a sports segment on a news program. The original transmission lasted just seconds, but depicted a fairly startling, confusing or humorous image. A person was stood against corrugated iron, wearing the mask of a television character, Max Headroom. After the TV engineers flicked the switch, so to speak, the news anchor was visibly and admittedly confused.

Two hours later, the same happened on a different channel. Yet this broadcast was longer. As it interrupted a return re-screening of Doctor Who, the Headroom character spoke in disjoined phrases. He then pulled down his pants, had a flyswatter passed to him to a woman, and smacked it against a rubber arse. Then the transmission ended.

No one was caught.

I find this fascinating and endearing. I just imagine three or four bored college kids sitting around one night, drinking beers and devising a pretty stupid plan. Whoever it was had a decent grip on the technology necessary, so these young, pasty, skinny kids doing it and becoming on-campus legends is just one of those cool things. I bet they sit at home, 45-years old and with a mortgage and kids, and still laugh about this whole thing.

I just posted this as another thing I've always found intriguing. I guess I liked the victimless crime of D.B. Cooper. I've been getting a little down due to some of the more graphic and disturbing cases, so I'm trying to divert some of the attention to something light hearted. Still, this Headroom thing scared the s**t out of me...

Probably as mysterious and open-ended as that D.B. Cooper case as well.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_broadcast_signal_intrusion
http://www.damninteresting.com/remember-remember-the-22nd-of-november/

 

[BACCS]

What the fcuk... that is just, disturbing and weird.

 

[Silent Alarm]

What the fcuk... that is just, disturbing and weird.

One of those things where making it is fine, but watching it is pretty off putting. To be honest, I even got the same feeling of unease from a Radiohead webshow

 

[grizzlym]

Interesting. And you bring up an interesting point re content that we've been discussing: do we have a sub board, or a prefix for the 'unsolved mysteries'?

Tis not crime but it shares a bed and it interests me.

 

[Tbone McGraw]

Gee i knew i shouldn't watch that before i go to sleep. That will screw up my night. However i couldn't help myself.

Is that one of the most bizarre things ever?

 

[HARPSichord]

I'm guessing they just did it to prove it could be done. Just a bit of harmless fun done by some bored university students.

 

[MC Extra Dollop]

I'm guessing they just did it to prove it could be done. Just a bit of harmless fun done by some bored university students.

Probably...still if some kids were watching at the time, there were probably a few nightmares that night. I can't imagine what it would have been like to see that as it happened, especially considering that I probably wouldn't have been able to make out anything that he was saying. You'd half be wondering if they were about to broadcast a terrorist attack, or a snuff film.

 

[HARPSichord]

Probably...still if some kids were watching at the time, there were probably a few nightmares that night. I can't imagine what it would have been like to see that as it happened, especially considering that I probably wouldn't have been able to make out anything that he was saying. You'd half be wondering if they were about to broadcast a terrorist attack, or a snuff film.

I'm really glad I didn't watch the video last night when I first saw this thread. It would have been nightmares for sure.

 

[Broken]

I've never heard of this before, but it's fascinating. I'd imagine for 1987 it would have been shocking and unsettling as I doubt there would have been anything as strange as this on any TV at the time.

 

[Silent Alarm]

I've never heard of this before, but it's fascinating. I'd imagine for 1987 it would have been shocking and unsettling as I doubt there would have been anything as strange as this on any TV at the time.

Scrambling was easier then. TV stations hadn't hit the late 1990s/early 2000s peaks, in which a bevy of engineers could kill intrusions instantly. All you had to do was override a satellite signal by using a more powerful one. It's a lot harder to do today.

There are two prominent instances of signal scrambling before Headroom.


In 1977, an ITV (UK) subsidiary was overtaken for six minutes. But this was just an audio thing. A voice, pretending to be some cosmic king fired off some kind of warning, telling humanity to destroy their weapons and be peaceful. No one knows who overtook the signal. I haven't listened to this, kind of don't want to...

A year before the Headroom ('86) incident, something similar happened on HBO. For four minutes, everyone watching the channel on the east side got a message. This bloke, a dish installer, put up a message that was against HBO's price hike. Nowhere near as startling or entertaining, but it was serving an agenda and probably helped inspire the Headroom thing. This guy was caught, but reportedly has no regrets and still owns a satellite installation company in Florida.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Midnight_(HBO)

Does anyone want to watch this? I haven't and I'm kind of a pussoir, so I'm not interested in being hesitant to sleep for a third night...

 

[Broken]

Does anyone want to watch this? I haven't and I'm kind of a pussoir, so I'm not interested in being hesitant to sleep for a third night...

If you were able to sit through the video in the OP, you should be right with this one - the other two are just noise in front of a static photo.

 

[HARPSichord]

If you were able to sit through the video in the OP, you should be right with this one - the other two are just noise in front of a static photo.

They weren't disturbing at all tbh.

 

[Broken]

They weren't disturbing at all tbh.

Yeah I've seen/heard scarier things in commercial music.

From Cracked.com, covers most of the OP

#3.The Max Headroom Broadcast Intrusion

What is it?
Want to sleep tonight? Then you probably shouldn't watch this:

This was a television broadcast interruption, breaking into WGN-TV and WTTW on November 22, 1987. The only way to sum this up in a single sentence is to say that a man was dressed as Max Headroom and crazy in ways most crazy people can only longingly aspire to.

The face of unbridled envy.
For those not familiar with him because you don't remember the 80s, Max Headroom was a CGI character with a distorted, electronic, stuttering voice. The background was constantly moving in a dizzying descent into pure madness. He did Coca-Cola ads and even had his own TV show back in the day. As bizarre as that sounds--it was the 80s, you had to be there--the intruder somehow made this infinitely creepier.

That is, creepier than this dead-eyed abomination.
The two stations, WGN-TV and WTTW, were interrupted within two hours. The first, the intruder interrupted the WGN nine o'clock news to announce to the world he had a screw loose. Unfortunately for him, there was only a buzzing noise accompanying the video. Then on the PBS station WTTW, Doctor Who was interrupted by the same video, though this time with audio. And it went for a horrifying minute and a half.

Though, because it was PBS, few people noticed.
The YouTube clip up there has subtitles, but they aren't very helpful. Here's a play by play, though it's about as useful as someone turning to you and explaining that the strange man on the subway is farting in Morse code without mentioning the important detail of why he does it.
So What's the Deal?
You might wonder how in the hell some nutjob could have the technical capability to get himself in front of millions of viewers by hacking the TV signal of one of the largest local TV stations in the country (that being WGN) but the shocking thing is it's incredibly easy. Apparently you just need a fairly simple piece of equipment that you can park near the broadcast transmitter. Even if the station encrypts their signal, you can still jam it so that nothing gets through.

So, unsurprisingly, Max Headroom impersonator was probably driving one of these.
Though how this nutjob managed even that has to leave you scratching your head, considering that he used his precious seconds with an audience to utter such thought-provoking lines as "I stole CBS!" and "I made a giant masterpiece for all the greatest world newspaper nerds." He finishes by bending over and allowing a girl to spank his naked ass with a fly swatter, screeching that someone was coming to get him.
Oh and once again, the culprits were never caught. Sleep easy!

Taken from (incidentally #5 and #2 are in the 3 scariest clip that Silent Alarm posted) : http://www.cracked.com/article_18381_the-5-creepiest-unexplained-broadcasts.html#ixzz2Eiiw5xDD

 

[Falchoon]

I'm really glad I didn't watch the video last night when I first saw this thread. It would have been nightmares for sure.

Dr Who used to give me nightmares back in the day. Green men with lumpy bodies.

 

[vast]

Never heard of this one, pretty cool. But im sure if I saw that Alien warning one as a kid, I might have totally freaked out and never slept again. I can imagine there would have people who thought this to be real.

 

[Bunk Moreland]

Haha.. found it pretty funny actually. Never heard of it either.

Reckon it was probably just some s**t stirrers who developed their way to do it, then maybe got drunk or high and thought they'd do it for a laugh. Might have even been some guys from the station or the industry. Just the way they referred to them as nerds. Explains how they'd know the technology. Also maybe why nobody ever claimed responsibility, sobered up and didn't wanna risk their jobs

 

[hirdy_is_champ]

That video is quite weird, but I can jsut imagine how scary it would've been at the time, especially as it was late at night. Maybe my bizarre apprehension towards transmission interuptions back in the day was warranted.

 

[nicky]

The video in the op is brilliant.