Max Headroom Hack
A broadcast signal hijacking of two television stations in Chicago, Illinois was administered on November 22, 1987, in an act of video piracy. The stations’ broadcasts were interrupted by a video of an unknown person wearing a Max Headroom mask and costume, amid distorted audio.
The first incident happened for 25 seconds during the sports segment of WGN-TV’s 9:00 p.m. news broadcast; the second occurred around two hours later, for about 90 seconds during PBS affiliate WTTW’s broadcast of Doctor Who.
The hacker made references to Max Headroom’s endorsement of Coca-Cola, the TV series Clutch Cargo, WGN anchor Chuck Swirsky; and “all the best world newspaper nerds”, a regard to WGN’s call letters, which represent “World’s Greatest Newspaper”. A corrugated panel swiveled back and forth mimicking Max Headroom’s geometric background effect.
Not long after the incident, WMAQ-TV humorously inserted clips of the hijacking into a newscast during Mark Giangreco’s sports highlights. “A lot of individuals thought it had been real – the pirate cutting into our broadcast. We got all types of calls about it,” said Giangreco.[18]
According to Motherboard, the incident became an influential “cyberpunk hacking trope”.[8] Thirty years later, the identity of the hijackers remained unknown.
