The day that WGN and WTTV lost control ~ The Max Headroom incident

image from www.geeksandbeats.com

"Max Headroom is a fictional British artificial intelligence (AI) character, known for his wit and stuttering, distorted, electronically sampled voice. He was introduced in early 1984. The character was created by George Stone,[1] Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton in the mid-1980s, and portrayed by Matt Frewer as "The World's first computer-generated TV host," although the computer-generated appearance was achieved with prosthetic makeup and hand-drawn backgrounds, as the computer technology of the time was not sufficiently advanced to achieve the desired effect. Preparing the look for filming involved a four-and-a-half-hour session in make-up, which Frewer described as "grueling" and "not fun," likening it to "being on the inside of a giant tennis ball"
Source www.wikipedia.com

I found this intensely strange incident in history hilarious, I mean I can only imagine the chaotic state of the viewers as well as the station, and I am sure that they did not share my sentiment on this, but hindsight left me hosing myself.

In Chicago, US; November 22, 1987 someone hijacked the evening broadcast of the WGN and WTTV station while wearing a Max Headroom mask. The initial interception of the signal was brief, and his English barely comprehensible. The signal was intercepted at 9:14pm and lasted 20 seconds, wit the person in a Max Headroom mask and sunglasses moving around maniacally while dancing and bobbing, with the only other audio being a loud buzzing noise, after which WGN regained control. They managed to do so by switching the frequency of their studio link to a different transmitter.

At 11pm on the same night a second incident took place while the popular TV show Doctor Who on was airing on WTTW. He was wearing the same Max Headroom mask and sunglasses, and the background crackled audio was also still the same.
He started off by remarking on WGN pundit Chuck Swirsky. then he started uttering random phrases while moaning laughing and screaming in-between. one of the slogans that happened to elude his babbling lips happened to be the New Coke’s advertising slogan "Catch the Wave" as he was crushing a Pepsi can and then tossing it. After that he leaned towards the camera pointing a middle finger at the screen with a rubber extension on it and started singing "Your love is fading"

He then started humming the theme song to Clutch Cargo wile he removed the rubber extension from his finger suddenly paused and said "I still se the X" a phrase that is often mistook for "I stole CBS" and continued humming. This was followed painful moaning as he exclaimed his piles and a flatulence sound in short succession. He stated: "I just made a giant masterpiece for all the World’s Greatest Newspaper nerds."

The scene then cut to the image of the man bare arse and bent over in side view, with a female in French maid costume spanking him with a fly swatter while saying "Bend over, bi**h!"as the man screamed loudly.

Only then did the Max Headroom footage blacked out, and a few seconds later the episode of "Doctor Who" resumed. The entire interruption on WTTW lasted for about 90 seconds due to the fact that WTTW could not reroute the signal because at such late hour there was no WTTW engineer on duty.

Until today the identity of the hijacker as well as the reasons for his actions remains unknown

[source: wikipedia.org, wikia.com, chicagoist.com]