WTTV Chicago - Max Headroom Pirating Incident - November 22, 1987
NSFW : brief male nudity, butt smacking, Doctor Who footage.
I'm not exactly sure how the word piracy came to mean anything other than robbery committed at sea. That being said, in the modern world, there are two definitions of the word that are heard far more often. These days, I'm sure the most common use is to denote copyright infringement, but only just behind that, and only because it has become both harder and less rewarding to do, is the act of broadcasting without a license. There are plenty of resources on the net relating to pirate radio broadcasts, but actual acts of video piracy, particularly those overriding mainstream broadcasters' signals have only happened on a handful of occasions.
On November 22nd, 1987, during WGN TV's 9:00 news broadcast, one such event happened, the sportscast was interrupted for 20 seconds with the image of a man in a Max Headroom mask in front of a moving piece of corrugated metal. There was no sound. The station hurriedly switched transmitters, and sportscaster Dan Roan appeared flustered. If that was all that happened, this wouldn't have been such a big deal.
From Wikipedia:
Later that night around 11:15pm during a broadcast of the Doctor Who episode Horror of Fang Rock on WTTW, the signal was hijacked by the same person. It was the same video that was broadcast during the WGN hijack, but this time there was audio. The person in the Max Headroom mask interrupted the broadcast, saying "He's a frickin' nerd" before laughing and stating "Yeah, I think I'm better than Chuck Swirsky!". The person continued to utter strange phrases including a Coke advertising slogan (Max Headroom was a Coke spokesperson at the time), humming the theme song to Clutch Cargo (pausing midway to say "I stole CBS"), before finally undressing below the waist and was spanked by an unknown woman with a flyswatter before the masked person cut off his transmission. It was over in about 90 seconds. The pirate was never caught. WTTW, which maintains its transmitter atop the Sears Tower, found that its engineers were unable to stop the hijacker because at the time there were no engineers on duty at the Sears Tower. Also, the station's master control center was unable to contact its transmitting equipment remotely to switch the STL (Studio To Transmitter Link), unlike their counterparts at WGN-TV, who were able to thwart the intruder by switching their John Hancock Center transmitter STL remotely within seconds.
Who was this guy? No one knows. Why did he do it? No one know that either. Why did he want to be smacked on the heiny? It's all a mystery. He joins Captain Midnight (the man who hacked the HBO Sat uplink in '82) and Thomas M. Haynie (who jammed the Playboy channel just a few months prior to this incident) in a select group of people who've pulled this off. He's also the only major perpetrator who was never caught. There has not been a major pirate TV disruption recorded since.
Whoever you are, Max Headroom Guy, I salute you, for Sticking It To the Man. Maybe your actions did not destroy the broadcast TV paradigm. Maybe all you wanted was to dress funny and have your butt smacked on the air. Whatever the reason, your actions inspire others to dare to talk back to the Terrible Machines of Media Compliance. That and you gave me something to write about on a Friday.
