Jon Chamberlain

The Headroom Hijack

So this is a story that, for a while, I was a bit obsessed with. The thing I found so intriguing is that no one knows who did it or why they did it, and for me, that adds so much more to the story. It was a surreal blip that referenced 80s culture and so cryptic and well done, but to have gone to those lengths for no reason or just as a prank seems bizarre. This incident has been written about and revisited to a new level of cult status on the internet, with people suggesting endless theories. On November 22, 1987 in Chicago during TV Station WGN-TV’s very normal live broadcast of the 9 O'clock News, showing highlights of the Chicago Bears Vs Detroit Lions, an American football game that had been played that afternoon, the screen went black. Then 15 seconds later a picture fizzed in to view of a person wearing a Plastic Max Headroom mask and sunglasses nodding their head in front of a sheet of corrugated metal, which was being moved around by two people out of view of the camera. This imitated the background effect used in the Max Headroom TV show. There was no audio other than a buzzing. After 21 seconds the hijack was stopped by engineers switching to another frequency. It cut back to a baffled newsreader who said: “Well, if you're wondering what just happened, haha, so am I.”