The Max Headroom signal hijacking occurred on the night of November 22, 1987, when the television signals of two stations in Chicago, Illinois, were hijacked, briefly sending a pirate broadcast of an unidentified person wearing a Max Headroom mask and costume to thousands of home viewers.
The first incident took place during the sports segment of independent TV station WGN-TV's 9:00 p.m. newscast. Like the later signal intrusion, it featured a person wearing a mask swaying erratically in front of a swiveling corrugated metal panel, apparently meant to resemble Max Headroom's animated geometric background. Unlike the later intrusion, the only sound was a loud buzz. This interruption went on for almost 17 seconds before engineers at WGN were able to regain control of their broadcast tower.
The second incident occurred about two hours later during PBS member station WTTW's broadcast of the Doctor Who serial Horror of Fang Rock. With nobody on duty at the affected tower, this signal takeover was more sustained, and the masked figure could be heard making reference to the real Max Headroom's advertisements for New Coke, the animated TV series Clutch Cargo, WGN sportscaster Chuck Swirsky, "Greatest World Newspaper nerds", and other seemingly unrelated topics. The video concluded with the masked figure’s bare buttocks being spanked by a woman with a flyswatter while yelling "They're coming to get me!", with the woman responding "Bend over, bitch!" as the figure was crying and screaming. At that point, the hijackers ended the pirate transmission, and normal programming resumed after a total interruption of about 90 seconds.
A criminal investigation conducted by the Federal Communications Commission in the immediate aftermath of the intrusion could not find the people responsible, and despite many unofficial inquiries and much speculation over the ensuing decades, the culprits have yet to be positively identified.
Signal intrusion
Both Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion incidents took place on local Chicago television stations on the night of Sunday, November 22, 1987.
WGN-TV
The first intrusion took place at 9:14 pm during the sports segment of WGN-TV's The Nine O'Clock News. Home viewers' screens went black for about fifteen seconds, before footage of a person wearing a Max Headroom mask and sunglasses is displayed. The individual rocks erratically in front of a rotating corrugated metal panel that mimicked the real Max Headroom's geometric background effect accompanied by a staticky and garbled buzzing sound. The entire intrusion lasted for about 20 seconds and was cut off when engineers at WGN changed the frequency of the signal linking the broadcast studio to the station's transmitter atop the John Hancock Center.
Upon returning to the airwaves, WGN sports anchor Dan Roan commented, "Well, if you're wondering what's happened, so am I", and joked that the computer running the news "took off and went wild". Roan then proceeded to restart his report of the day's Chicago Bears game, which had been interrupted by the intrusion.
WTTW
That same night, at about 11:20 pm, the signal of local PBS station WTTW was interrupted during an airing of the Doctor Who serial Horror of Fang Rock. The culprit was the same Max Headroom impersonator, this time speaking with distorted audio.