But the WTTW takeover lasted a full 90 seconds, and the pirate TV broadcast's audio, while distorted, was audible to anyone who happened to be tuned in. In the case of the WGN news broadcast, engineers were able to change the frequency used in the uplink to the John Hancock tower after a brief interruption, and the audio from the pirate transmission was drowned in static. The hack was made possible by the analog television broadcast technology of the day-the attacker was able to overpower the signals sent by the television studios to a broadcast antenna atop the John Hancock building in Chicago with his or her own signals. To this day, the perpetrators of the television hack remain unknown. The FCC and FBI both investigated the Max Headroom incident, but could find no leads on who could have done this or why. Who on the Chicago public television station WTTW. The Max Headroom incident, which occurred just one year later, didnt involve satellite hijacking, but it did result in air waves being taken over.
The rambling was very bizarre and disjointed. Supposedly they suspect an ex employee or intern. Robot, the hacker group called F- Society created a very similar video to the Max Headroom incident on a VHS tape, so that there would be no digital signature. I remember reading that Scratchy & Co, a bizarre British children's show from the 90s starring Mark Speight (who hanged himself in the late 2000s), was inspired by the Max Headroom incident. The "broadcast intrusion" interrupted a primetime news broadcast from Chicago's WGN, and then (more successfully) the 11:00pm broadcast of Dr. It appears to be inspired by the Max Headroom incident, and the backstory of the TV show may have some insight into more of the theories that people have had over the years.
Thirty years ago today, a person or persons unknown briefly hijacked the signal of two Chicago television stations, broadcasting a bizarre taped message from a man wearing a Max Headroom mask.