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.”

Now, for all you millennials who don’t know who Max Headroom is, I find him to be an equally bizarre blip of 80s culture. Max Headroom was a computer-generated TV host and journalist living in a dystopian future. He hosted a music video show late at night on Channel 4 in the early 80s. He was such a cult hit his show got bigger with celebrity interviews and then he became a big hit in the US with his own hour-long TV show and an ad campaign for New Coke, another mystifying cornerstone moment of the 80s. Unfortunately, he wasn’t really computer-generated as this was the 80s and they didn’t have the technology. It was an actor, Matt Frewer, in heavy make-up and a dark suit which was a fibreglass mould that gave it that blocky 80s computer-generated look. It was only his head and shoulders that you saw in front of a rotating cubed background. And when he spoke his voice would pitch up and down or get stuck in a loop like a computer glitch. I kind of remember Max Headroom from when I was a kid, mostly that I found it strange, and I still do today. I do remember getting the reference to him in Back To The Future 2 when Marty McFly goes into the Cafe 80's and sees Max-inspired versions of Michael Jackson and Ronald Reagan as virtual waiters serving Pepsi Perfects.

But that’s not the end of the story. Later that night, at 11:15 PM, during a broadcast of Doctor Who on station WTTW, a different TV station, the signal was hijacked with the same video as before but this time with audio. The audio was distorted but you could just make out what the person in the Headroom mask was saying.

"That does it. He's a freakin' nerd," before laughing, "Yeah, I think I'm better than Chuck Swirsky. Freakin' liberal." Chuck Swirsky was a radio sports commentator for WGN-TV at the time. Then they continued saying “Oh Jesus,” as they bent down out of shot to retrieve a Pepsi can. “Catch the Wave," they said, holding it to the camera then throwing it out of shot.

Max Headroom was in an ad at the time for New Coke where he puzzlingly interviews a sweating can of Pepsi ending with the catchphrase “Catch the Wave." Then disturbingly they screech "Your love is fading" as they come towards the camera and begin humming the theme song to a cartoon called Clutch Cargo. I am only aware of this cartoon as there is a clip of it in Pulp Fiction. It's a strange cartoon where they use drawn pictures with real actors' mouths. Then after saying “My piles,” they state that they had "made a giant masterpiece for all the greatest world newspaper nerds," in reference to a slogan borrowed from the early days of the Chicago Tribune, the newspaper that owned the station.

Then they held up a glove and said, "My brother is wearing the other one," and they put the glove on, commenting that it was "dirty" along with some unintelligible comments. The picture suddenly cuts over to a shot of the person's lower torso, their ass exposed from the side, and they were holding the now-removed mask up to the camera while being spanked with a fly swatter by an unidentified accomplice wearing a dress; he howls, "Oh no, they're coming to get me!" The transmission then blacked out and cut off, and the hijack was over after about 90 seconds.

WTTW found that its engineers were unable to stop the hijacker. They got caught sleeping on the job, basically, and by the time they began looking into what was going on, it was over, and Doctor Who came back on. Within hours, federal officials would be called in to investigate one of the strangest crimes in TV history, a rare broadcast signal intrusion, with no clear motive, method, or culprits.

So the investigation began. WTTW discussed with the authorities that the transmission of the signal intrusion must have been close to the transmitter located atop the Sears Tower, a skyscraper in downtown Chicago. This immediately posed a problem, as locating the hackers in the densely populated part of downtown Chicago would be extremely difficult, as they could have transmitted from any number of thousands of apartments or rooftops.

Officials from the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) and even the FBI, from their Chicago office, pledged to track down the mysterious hackers and bring them to justice. "I would like to inform anybody involved in this kinda thing, that there's a maximum penalty of $100,000, one-year in jail, or both," Phil Bradford, an FCC spokesman, told a reporter the following day as the TV intrusion had made national headlines. While FCC agents were working out the likely technical scenario, the FBI carefully examined the video. Analysts from the Bureau enhanced frames from the tape, especially the upper right-hand corner, to get a better look at Max's kinky accomplice. But the investigation slowed down, due to a lack of evidence. The FBI pulled out as they didn't have the manpower, and the FCC just wasn't used to this type of investigation nor did they have the resources. The case was dead and apparently the hacker is still wanted to this day.

In a pre-internet time if you didn't catch the live broadcast of a show you were reliant on someone's home recording; for the people of Chicago this meant finding someone who had taped Doctor Who, and many people watched the video again and again via this means. It was said that kids at school would pass a tape around if they had been lucky enough to be recording Doctor Who that night and even pirate copies were made and distributed around. It probably sat proudly in their VHS collection as a gem of oddity until the invention of YouTube where hundreds of people have uploaded their copies. I can totally imagine me as a kid frantically trying to find someone with a copy to sit and study, watching over and over again, just as I have on YouTube. There are many theories that it was a personal attack on the station due to them referencing the cartoon Clutch Cargo and the sports anchor that appeared on that channel; however, I think it was just a hacker flexing their technical muscle. There is no threat or political message behind what they say and I think you can only really view it as a prank. They claimed in the tape that they had made a masterpiece, and I think in some ways they did.

I find it such a mysterious treasure of the 80s and to whoever did it, for that reason, I am thankful.

Jon Chamberlain, Oddities Of Pop Culture