![]() WTTW did not have engineers on the scene to deal with the signal disruption. ![]() The second hijacking came to an end when the hackers terminated the transmission on their own. The broadcast returned to normal a few seconds later, leaving many people puzzled by the ordeal. The interruption was followed by a side view of exposed buttocks being spanked by a female character with a fly swatter. In the middle of the video, the hacker proudly stated, "I just made a giant masterpiece for the Greatest World Newspaper nerds." The first station to be hacked that day was WGN-TV, which stands for "World's Greatest Newspaper." The hijacker then began humming the Temptations' 1966 song "Your love is fading." However, the twitchy, strange-sounding character's somewhat juvenile presentation makes it difficult not to see a movie villain in him. Swirsky later expressed concern for his safety, claiming that he was singled out in the transmission for no apparent reason. WGN sportscaster Chuck Swirsky was called a "frickin' liberal," and a Pepsi can was displayed while a Coca-Cola slogan was called. The 90-second video was disorganized, with the perpetrator gliding over seemingly random subjects. The perpetrators began an episode of Doctor Who by saying, "He's a fricking nerd," followed by a digitalized laughter reminiscent of the original Max Headroom show. Hackers broke into the signal of another Chicago-based station, WTTW, around 11:20 p.m. Viewers only heard what the people behind the Max Headroom mask had to say after a second attempt at hijacking the TV signal. The ghost of Headroom used to appear in broadcasts, like in a modern horror story, sharing snarky, sometimes off-beat jokes with a dash of social commentary. Headroom's hacker friend preserved his brain and uploaded it to the network, effectively turning him into a digital entity. In the TV show, Max Headroom was a journalist who was assassinated over digging dirt on the corporation that owned the TV station he worked at. In reality, Canadian-American actor Matt Frewer wore prosthetic makeup to create the character's computer-generated appearance. The perpetrator was dressed as Max Headroom, a fictional British TV character.Ī fictional 'artificial intelligence' character appeared in the first season of the show. The creepy aesthetics were not chosen at random. Once the stations' engineers were able to get the regular broadcast back on the air, sports anchor Dan Roan commented, "Well, if you're wondering what's happened, so am I." Who is Max Headroom? WGN-engineers TV's were perplexed, so they turned off the intrusion by changing the signal frequency between the broadcast studio and the station. The broadcast was initially interrupted by a ten-second black screen, followed by a creepy-looking masked person in front of a corrugated metal background.Ī screeching digital noise accompanied the interruption, making it unclear whether the character had anything to say. ![]() The first intrusion lasted about 25 seconds and happened during the sports segment of Chicago's WGN-TV newscast. The hack becomes stranger the more you read about it. The Max Headroom hack appears to be a scene from a modern hacker film like Mr. ![]() However, the event has been immortalized due to the lack of clarity, making it a must-know for any fan of hacker culture and subversive art. Authorities were unable to apprehend the culprits despite a lengthy investigation. The incident, dubbed "Max Headroom signal jacking" because of the perpetrators' mask choice, sparked a lot of speculation, but no answers. On the evening of November 22, 1987, a masked person took over transmission twice, uttering seemingly meaningless jokes and trivia for a total of two minutes. Millions of people in the Chicago area were forced to watch a major broadcast hijacking exactly 34 years ago.
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