The Max Headroom Broadcast Signal Intrusion Incident was a television signal hijacking in Chicago, Illinois, on the evening of November 22, 1987. It is an example of what is known in the television business as broadcast signal intrusion. The intruder was successful in interrupting two television stations within three hours. Neither the hijacker nor the accomplices have ever been found or identified.
The news reports about this scared the shit out of me when I was a kid. Watch what happened here.
One of my favorite TV stories ever, and in fact I have been tossing around the idea for a novel for years inspired by this incident. Could something like this even happen today?
As a little kid at the end of the world, I grew up with C-Band satellite, which had lots of weird channels. Like Videodrome, but with less torture porn (maybe that was on Ku-band? Much love to the five people that got that joke). C-Band was the home of another famous intrusion, the Captain Midnight incident, where someone infiltrated HBO and put up a message in front of colorbars.
I love this stuff. I could start a Tumblr just about C-Band craziness but my two favorite bizarre C-Band channels: a feed from a Canadian “trotter” horse track and a CGI dog calling bingo. I miss it still, even though I would never again live in the country (and C-Band died about 10 years ago in favor of DirecTV and Dish). All my love for weird TV, like the Max Headroom incident, stems from C-Band.
