Sunday evening, November. 22, 1987, was approx A festive night for lovers doctor who. The next day marks 24 years since the British sci-fi classic first aired. While the Seventh Doctor, Sylvester McCoy, was the last incumbent, Chicago station WTTW was rerunning the first episode of the Fourth Doctor's adventure. "Fang Rock Horror".
Those who followed the 10-year-old's adventure were probably familiar with the concept that anything could happen in a Time Lord's life, but they didn't expect what they saw. A few minutes into the broadcast, the scene showing a lighthouse from the early 20th century fades out, and the face of fictional AI character Max Headroom appears.
But it wasn't really Headroom, played by Matt Frewer, who rose to fame most recently as the character hosting "20 Minutes in the Future." It was someone wearing a head mask, who proceeded to clown on the hacked airwaves for about 90 seconds. In those seconds, the masked man spoke obvious gibberish, beginning with, “This does it. He's a freakin' nerd!” Followed by references to local sports commentator Chuck Swirsky, the recent Headroom commercial for Coca-Cola and words that were hard to come by. follow them. He put on a glove, saying his brother had the other one with him, made a comment about "The World newspaper nerds" and then said, "Whoa! They're coming to get me!" "Oh, do it!" The last words heard were as the hack ended and he was replaced by Fourth Doctor Tom Baker at the lighthouse, announcing, "As far as I know, a massive electric shock—he died instantly."
This was the second intervention of the evening. Just before that, local news station WGN-TV experienced a 30-second outage when the same number appeared, although no audio was broadcast at the time. All together, the event made headlines around the world and became known as the Max Headroom signal hijacking - though the Headroom element was nothing more than a mask.
Watch Max Headroom Hack
WTTW broadcast director Paul Rizzo later recalled his horror when the moment unfolded. "Suddenly we don't have it anymore doctor who On air - we have Max Headroom mask, "Heh He said. "And as the content has gotten more bizarre, we've become increasingly concerned about not being able to do anything about it." Fellow Al Skierkiewicz added that he “has to be a radio engineer, satellite engineer, or ham radio operator. And maybe a combination of at least two of those in order to make that happen.”
In 2019, Swirsky told endless topic podcast that he was inundated with calls after the interruption he didn't watch. He was asked: "Hi, did you just hear ..." or "Did you see?" "'what are you talking about?' “Maximum headroom!” “Yeah, what about Max Headroom?” “Well, I mean, he mentioned you!” I said, “What did he say?” He said you were a “liberal” weirdo… I thought it was a joke! ... I didn't really understand the whole Max Headroom phenomenon. I mean, I really couldn't relate to him. I had no connection."
Swirsky has found himself in the center of media attention for all the wrong reasons. “Two friends told me… ‘You better ask for protection.’ Whoever did this had to be smart and sharp to do what he did.” "People started asking me, 'Well, in the next election, who are you going to pick in 1988?'" You know, “What are your opinions on this, this and that?” You know, I just want to be a guy, just a man in the street. The FCC launched a criminal investigation, but the perpetrators were never identified. Phil Bradford of the organization told the media, "It's very serious and we'd like to let anyone involved in this sort of thing know that it's serious and that we're going to take every step we can to find out who's doing this. Once we've identified that, we'll make sure the law is implemented at full capacity."
Watching "Real" Max Headroom in action
Although the maximum penalty for the offense is $100,000 and jail time - the law has changed since HBO's Captain Midnight jammer The year before - many people over the years have claimed this trick. In a 2010 Redditor He said He knew who did it, providing what he hoped were sufficient details to be believed, though he refused to name anyone involved should he be brought to court. He said he was with brothers "J" and "K" that same night, and they suggested he move to WTTW later. What he saw convinced him that "this is the kind of humor that G liked," the Redditor wrote. "All of his jokes, consistently, involved something childish and/or sexually deviant. The video is, for all intents and purposes, the perfect reflection of J.'s humor. Scattered, spooky, and sexually deviant."
A few years later, he notes that both J and K are disqualified for breaking the law. By then, documentary filmmaker Chris Nettle had launched an investigation, claiming that someone at the FCC's head office had more information than his boss would allow to be released. "According to him, his hands were tied behind his back," Kneitel said. “He had what he thought was a reliable idea of where they were broadcasting, where they were sending their signal. But someone he didn't name, specifically who he was working with...He didn't want him to go follow it, he didn't want him to knock on doors.” When asked why, he replied: "I don't know."
He added that "One area that I haven't fully explored has been a lot of layoffs in the months leading up to the accident. To me, I feel it's probably someone who was a former broadcast employee in any capacity. But there's no hard evidence there."
Like the best conspiracy theories - and maybe like A.J doctor who The story, as the unwitting world will never know that she was saved from destruction by an alien threat - the Max Headroom incident remains unsolved.
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