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Broadcast TV hacking is especially interesting because it's such a niche area of expertise and utilizes a lot of hardware that isn't common or readily available, even to serious amateurs. I miss the days when the world was a little more open to "experimentation"
My dad made a pirate radio station once. In his youth. But it was probably only in a small radius since he hadn access to hi power radio gear. But it was enough to put a vinyl on inside and listen to it outside on a transistor radio at the lake.
I don’t know, I had the skills as a kid who built myself a pirate radio station in the early 90s (I was a broadcast nerd with subscriptions to & copies of all the engineering magazines for radio & TV broadcasting) and knew others who probably could as well, though not in Chicago. Lots of this stuff is in the ARRL handbook, but those analog STLs were dead simple and with a little time & money, you can tweak things not intended for the purpose or build your own. Not trivial to everyone, but something anyone who’s really into this with a bit of time could figure out IF they had access to the right parts & equipment (most people simply don’t care enough to know). Those STL transmitters & receivers were made for STLs and were expensive, but it’s basic tech and any microwave or VHF experience (depending on which system they used) could be used here. They had all sorts of cheaper equipment that could be modified, like the local microwave systems they used to use for premium television regionally using microwave antennas & receivers - those were readily available for cheap in ‘87 as those systems lost money and cable pretty much killed them off, so surplus was there cheap in a place like Chicago by ‘87. You could get all sorts of stuff if you tried. Local radio stations used to give me old gear all the time, when I was 10-15 or so. Surplus stores existed then as well, all over every metro area. So it really could be anyone, it certainly didn’t require a professional.
Honestly, if I remember the frequencies right, then you could probably have done it with just an amplifier for analogue satellite TV (which yes, was a thing- some of the satellites might even still be active... maybe). You basically need a VCR, a frequency shifter, an amplifier, and an antenna- and if you got the right amplifier, then you'd be able to either use it straight, or modify it for the purpose, while also using it _as_ the frequency shifter. This sort of thing wasn't really used to hijack TV stations much, but there was a low-key TV-theft market for both cable and satellite TV from almost the moment they were created.
@@absalomdraconis this is what I was thinking! A portable VCR such as for portable non-camcorders could’ve fit in a backpack along with the satellite TV signal booster wired backwards.
@@filminginportland1654 decades ago , playing around with an old CB radio wondering what the cans did inside, And a neighbor that was into tweaking radios , found outgrocery store parking lot and fast food restaurants with their headsets or parking under phone lines, If the signal is not focused properly it bleeds on to other channelsThe employees would be laughing but ask us to stop, oh yeah we got in trouble sometimes but it was fun, we didn’t know that’s what it did or would do,These phones and internet nowadays ,wouldn’t be affected, had to be in the drive-through or very close to the store , it was long ago they probably have better radios and communication now, tweaked CB radios don’t last long ,they all fried, Back in the 90s when the truckers came over the hill into Reno they were in for a comedy show especially on the weekends at night
The fuzzymemories clip was (at some stage) a Betamax recording, that bending at the top of the frame is standard Betamax tape wear. There is no VHS involved, as there is no head-switching in the bottom of the frame. The 'wobble' at the start and end of the intrusion is also standard Betamax behavior when using butt-joint or pause-button, or when sync needs to be adjusted. You can recreate this by switching channels on the internal tuner while recording - the same happens on some VHS machines, but not as clearly. Best stick to the uMatic (timestamped) log recordings from the station itself, as the consumer recording is clearly not reliable.
@@thestarlitwaters Also not to mention that Betacam wasn't only an industry standard in the US. Though I'm somewhat confused by their assumedly derogatory comment anyhow. Fits what exactly? Though I guess they are just being like "America uses crappy video cuz they r crappy country, tee hee, ha ha" like a 5 year old.
I saw the second broadcast live and had it on VHS tape for years. My family were big Doctor Who fans and watched every Sunday on Channel 11(and taped them). So 9 year old me got to see this rare historical event. Was weird then and is still weird today
Another high five! I too got to experience the WTTW hack during Doctor Who. I was only half watching the TV when "WTF?!" and was wondering if someone dosed 17 year-old me.
What a lucky thing that your parents had such great taste in Sci Fi! Getting it on tape is downright legendary. Honestly having the collection of Dr who on tape is not too shabby in itself!
I've seen the clip before, but never seen the reactions from the viewers on the news... I kinda find the reactions more interesting than the intrusion itself, it's as though something breached reality and punishment is in order.
The first one Is creepy especially for people who don't know who Max Headroom Is Remember this was before the Internet, before smart phones, Just you and a TV remote In the dark late at night and this happens
Your earliest memory is 8? I've got solid memories well before kindergarten. I recall peeing myself as a toddler while sleeping and it feeling sooooo good.
@@Persun_McPersonson For what it's worth, I vividly remember being around 7 and sleepwalking and mistaking my bed for the toilet. I woke up as I was in the middle of standing before my bed, pissing on it. Felt weird man
I lived in Brighton Park by 43rd and Western. I can remember my Grandpa, (RIP) yelling my Grandma's(RIP) name saying "MARY! MARY! HES BACK AND GETTING HIS ASS SWATTED!!" I was 9 at the time, had just gotten dropped off at their house when my mom went to work. I heard a lot of talk about it the next couple days, but I didn't have a concept of how cool of a moment it was. I later saw a YT of it 8 or 9 years ago and it all came back to me.
@@italianbeefslayer my best friend Frank lived on Artesian between 43rd and 44th. Back in 88. And Francine Aldaco. She was yum. Is Julia's restaurant still there on Western? And Moonlighters? My grandma owned both of those back in the day.
The audio distortion is characteristic of a "ring modulator," which mixes an incoming audio signal with a second signal (usually a sine or square wave) using a diode ring similar to (but not the same as) a full-wave DC rectifier. The hacker knew that this would disguise his voice in a way that couldn't be de-scrambled, at least with the technology available at the time. Ring modulators were a cheap and simple way to thoroughly disguise a voice without completely destroying intelligibility.
@@Houshalter It's probably possible to undo it in software, but probably not to the extent necessary to identify the speaker. It depends on how accurately the original audio waveform is preserved today.
My two favourite broadcast intrusions were: 1. The one where somebody managed to put an Emergency Broadcast System alert on screen and over the speakers warning of zombies. 2. Somebody hijacked a camera that fed a "peaceful imagery" channel and used CGI to make it look like a nuclear bomb was going off at that location Edit: The zombies one wasn't technically a broadcast intrusion, somebody hacked into the EAS decoder at the station. It has an amusing postscript though - when another TV station reported on the incident, they inadvertantly replayed the burst of coded information at the start of the false alert, which propagated it automatically to another TV station and caused a second false alert!
"...not very bright realy..." well we are still talking about it 40 years later (and they were never caught)....so......id say it was VERY BRIGHT! dudes a legend, and a hero, 100%
After decades, the statute of limitations has to have expired. Why doesn't this absolute legend come forward? I remember learning about this in the mid 90s when I was just getting into computers and the fledgling internet. I was getting into phone phreaking and simple hacks on school computers. The idea of hijacking an entire TV station blew my mind. This person is a real life Zero Cool only they took it a step further than just changing what show was on. They put on their own homemade show, as creepy as it is. I was fascinated by this story back then. This is the best documentary style video I've ever seen on it and had a lot of new ideas and information I had never heard before. It's also done in an objective way that doesn't try to sensationalize anything. Well done, NN.
@@Legend813a In the US of A, copyright laws protect that which has been created for 70 years after the death of the original creator. It's harder to prove in court if the creation hasn't been registered. Either way, the answer to your premise is "no". Someone can't just grab Max Headroom and run with it yet without risk of being sued. There are exceptions such as satire that fall under fair use because freedom of speech exists in the US of A.
Quite a comprehensive look at the hacking incidents. With regard to the "signal distortion" in the VHS copy of the WGN hack, I believe the stretching and overall instability were the result of flaws in either the VCR that was used to record or play back the off air broadcast. The distortion at the top of the picture is known as "skew", and is caused either by misalignment of the tape as it was being recorded, or by a misaligned playback deck used when the footage was digitized. As for the rolling horizontal lines, I think it's a combination of the hijacker's program material and time based errors caused by the VCR doing the off air recording. During points when lines appear but the overall picture remains steady, it's likely the program material. However, when the screen jumps along with the lines I believe it's a result of timing errors in the signal. VCRs of the day didn't offer any sort of built in time based correction, so when the video sync signal abruptly changes as the picture goes to black (likely at the instant the engineers switched frequencies), it causes the VCR to go crazy as it attempts to resync from the Max signal to the WGN signal, resulting in the rolling lines you see as it goes black, right before finally stabilizing. If you ever use a simple A/V switch box, you may notice the picture vertically roll quickly as you switch sources, which is caused by a change in the sync timing of the sources. If you record this with an old VCR, you'll get similar results as the continuity when Max goes black (i.e. additional horizontal lines rolling off screen and more jumping). This is not to be confused with a professional analog video switcher, in which all the sources are synced together using a reference signal, resulting in clean cuts between sources. One of our city's low end local channels uses the basic switch box approach, and I've recorded it off air on VHS in the past. It's one of those full page info graphic deals mixed with actual footage. I would get the same jumpy instability when they switched from graphics to footage. I've seen some public access stations do this as well. This was definitely the most interesting broadcast highjacking to date, and this video goes into great detail. Great job on doing it justice.
This happened when I was a kid and it scared the crap out of me seeing it on the news. I was terrified to watch TV for months because I was afraid this would happen! 🤣
Probably a coincidence, but a similar form of voice modulation was done to voice the Daleks from _Doctor Who._ Again, probably not related, but if the second hack was part of the plan (which seems likely since they clearly knew the frequency and direction with little effort), then it might also tie into why that particular programming block was chosen. All just rampant speculation of course.
So my understanding is that a ring modulator takes in two signals and out puts both the sum and difference between the two. So if the effect was caused by feeding the mic through a ring modulator it would be the audio and some sort of carrier signal into the modulator... but shouldn't that mean you can then reverse the effect once you know the carrier signal? If someone could pull that off they could clean up the audio
@@aaronhazelwood6489 It's not that easy. The type of ring modulation used for sound manipulation leads to a heavily mutated spectral mess. It gets even worse when you add other noise as well, like from a magnetic video tape.
WGN's call letters do come from "World's Greatest NewsPAPER". The station(s) were owned by the Chicago Tribune. The Tribune had been using the slogan "World's Greatest Newspaper" for decades bofore entering the broadcasting business.
@@locke103 The ZX Spectrum outputs a standard TV video output, I used the US Version (Timex/Sinclair 2068) to make titles and animations for "home videos" in the 1980s
@@jamesslick4790 I was young back then, born in 1984. My journey into computers did start at four years old, though. Dad had an Apple II GS, lured me in with gaming, coincidentally.
I recall reading about this incident on Wikipedia as a kid. Not many Wikipedia articles has disturbed me as this one. I still felt uneasy watching this. Cannot even begin imagine expiriencing this live. Great video
I live in Chicago, so my now-fiance and I knew at least vaguely of this incident. I ended up referencing it in my Doctor Who RPG campaign, saying it was the work of a shapeshifting alien. Then I looked it up and realized that the hack happened during an episode of Doctor Who, and we all laughed for several minutes straight. Only upon watching this video have I learned that the Doctor Who episode in question involved...a shapeshifting alien. Gotta love it.
The knowledge needed would not have been easily available at the time. Nor would the equipment. There are only two groups of people who would have both of these: Someone from within the television industry - perhaps an engineer who appropriated some scrap heading for disposal. Or a ham radio operator, who would have the skill to build their own equipment. Probably the former.
@@vylbird8014 If you are saying that it would have been hard to generate an NTSC video signal and overpower an un-encoded analog channel, I'm going to go out on a limb disagree. And why would a hammie (radio enthusiast) have any special knowledge of UHF and VHF channels? You must realize that this is just the kind of stuff that electrical engineers everywhere would study in college, right? Don't you think that people knew anything before the Internet?
@@kurtpena5462 Because they didn't just overpower the TV transmitter: They overpowered the uplink coming from the studio to the transmitter. That was a microwave link. So you need to generate your NTSC video signal, modulate that onto a microwave carrier in the appropriate manner, and send that to the transmitter. Can't do that with consumer equipment: You're going to need to either obtain your own very specialised modulator and amplifier, or construct one from components.
Most uplinks were microwave, yes, but if you were the sort of person who could build vhf transmitters then building a little exciter using the front end of a uhf TV and some other bits and bobs was much of a stretch... When i was a kid i never knew this stuff happened but when i read about it years later it blew my mind that someone could do that to something that seemed so impossible to do.
When I was really little, I used to get in trouble for sneaking up and going and turning on the TV and watching Max Headroom. I was convinced he was from the future and had all the answers to everything I ever wanted to know. I was only 3 or 4 lol but I was attracted to that TV like a poltergeist was calling to me from it. When I watch it now as an adult it seems so silly but when I was little I really believed he was an important person 😂
I find it pretty weird how outraged people got, even the people interviewed by the news. People should’ve just had a good laugh and be thankful that Max Headroom exposed a security issue with something kinda fun and weird before someone else could’ve put hardcore porn or even a live torture/murder or something like that , that would actually give everybody good reason to be outraged about. Thanks Max Headroom! 😉👍
"Some ppl will be so dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it... Morpheus, The Matrix. Sheep don't like it when their routine is disturbed.
Yeah ANOTHER SI=OP CREATED BY THE ELITES TO ADVERTISE THIS CHARACTER AND IT WORKS BEAUTIFULLY DIDN'T IT HUMANS ALWAYS FALLING FOR THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER AGAIN!!!
For a lot of people at the time, this tech was kinda magic. Not everyone; not by a long shot - there were probably as many people (percentage-wise) in the US who could have pulled this off as there are people today who can build a good PC gaming rig. I was in my late 20s at the time this happened, and just out of the military where I had further refined my RF technical knowledge after I spent my teen years messing about with radios and even early hobbyist computers. At the time, I considered this "incident" to be rather trivial and amusing. Honestly, I still do. But I was a definite outlier compared to people such as my parents - or grandparents - who would have had some difficulty wrapping their heads around the most basic RF concepts necessary to pull off an interception like this. And - again, at the time - they were the vast majority of people living in the US. Pure, mid-tier "Baby Boomers"; the largest in raw numbers population bulge this nation has ever seen. Their attitudes and perceptions WERE "reality", no matter how actual reality worked otherwise.
If it were me, I would have broadcast a nuclear attack EAS message. "MULTIPLE MEGATON CLASS SOVIET WEAPONS HAVE BEEN SPOTTED ON EARLY WARNING RADAR AS BEING INBOUND TO THE GREATER CHICAGO AREA. TAKE SHELTER IMMEDIATELY". Ya know, like the Hawaii prank
I remember back in the day this one hacking group gave me whole instructions on how to make my tv signal but avoided legally not writing that you could hack other channels. I remember a lot of equipment. I miss those old days. I feel like people knew more back then.
i’m fascinated by broadcast intrusions, i find most of them terrifying but i actually find this one hilarious. if the guy didn’t talk id probably find it scary
I'll imagine nobody came forward because they believe no one would believe them and they have probably destroyed and or lost all evidence linking them to the incident. That's what I would think if I had done something like this.
My guess is the first broadcast was a test to test whether they could do it, and maybe to see what the response is from a studio with active staff would be.
As fan of the (real) Max, this is fascinating. Pseudo-Max's voice actually sounds a lot like a Dalek. And the woman's costume in "Horror of Fang Rock" is oddly reminiscent of "Picnic at Hanging Rock".
I've already watched a lot of coverage of the Max Headroom incident, but if Nerd is talking about it I'm gonna take the time to watch. Really love the way you present the weirder side of our technical history. Maybe Bert is behind the Max Headroom incident, as well as the Dodelston messages??
I don't think it was a technician at WGN, as the intrusion occurred on 2 different frequencies broadcasting from different locations. The equipment needed could have been obtained for much less than $10K at the time. Military surplus stores, and ham radio shops sold everything needed. It certainly had to be someone with decent knowledge of frequency intrusion, and would have required a lot of power for a short period, but the actual knowledge of channel frequencies and location of broadcast was readily available. I agree with you that the 2 people filming were probably the only people involved, as if more were involved then someone would have admitted it by now. The mystery is what's kept it alive this long.
i remember the Headroom incidents so clearly from my late teens .. funny though, what i remember as well is that they were considered to be almost big news 'terrorist' attacks at the time (I personally thought it was awesome). Amazing in hindsight just how innocent we were in the 80's. lol.
Really fresh look at this incident. I was watching WGN that night and it really freaked me out. I've watched blips about it pop up ever since....your look was the best and most logically done that i've seen.
Yeah. He's not calling chuck out he is mocking Dan Roan and saying it as if it's something Dan would say about Chuck. Also the original laid over translation is clearly wrong in a couple spots. He says "footprints" on the gloves and says "mas-turd-piece"
Ah, the good old analogue TV days when this kind of crap was relatively easy, the only catches being getting the frequency and whether the link used VSB or FM modulation. If VSB, then the modulator in the back of a VCR is a good start, add a preamp or two, a crude frequency shifter and finally a microwave PA. The PA being potentially the trickiest, however there would have been kits available - whilst targeted at the amateur/ham radio fraternity, was far from impossible. The other source could have been an old decommissioned link transmitter picked up from a radio swap-meet. The hardest bit, test equipment and the knowledge to align it all. Total cost $100 These days with digital and fibre links, way way harder
36:13 I don't get it. I'd imagine anybody could buy metal like that. The actual scene was probably filmed in a basement though it's possible that even a normal room would work.
Not even hijacks, but in general things were much looser. A tv station ran an unedited broadcast of Lifeforce late one night (which I was blessed to see).
This guy knew a LOT about broadcasting if he didn't work in the industry he sure found a way to get a firm understanding of many of it's intriqencies, it does seem to be done by hobbiest, whoever or whatever he was this was his masterpiece...it does make me think there was a broader message that was intended.
It could also have been more than one guy. One guy to produce the content, and another co-conspirator to feed the signal into the feed horn. The second person perhaps being an employee in the TV business (possibly still working in the business nowadays, maybe fearing to lose his job if his identity is revealed, even though he can't be fined any more). There might even have been another person who had access to the roof of the John Hancock Building - getting a transmitter directly in front of a fee horn would have been an option to overpower the legit signal with a rather small transmitter. On the other hand, a few closed doors would, quite possibly, not present any seriously challenge to anyone with basic experience in non-destructive entry methods.
I don't believe there was rhyme nor reason behind this at all: It was simply because they could. I think if you look at the preponderance of nonsense in internet culture today, we can see what people will do for a little bit of limelight - and what anonymity empowers people to do, just as the mask here did for "Max". Edglelords gonna edgelord.
yeah, it reminds me of very early internet content. It's honestly not that weird or disturbing to me. Just rapid fire nonsense from someone having a laugh. All the analogue distortion makes it probably creepier to us more used to high definition
@@rossstewart9475 actually... You're right. Thank you for the perspective. I used to be more of a whovian and I forgot to consider the affect on my former fellow travelers.
Looks like OA also has a followup from four years ago that is twice as long but has less views than their original ten year old video. Perhaps I’ll watch both. Already very familiar with the incident though.
That man needs more attention. Been subscribe to him for a decent amount of time now. Kind of funny any of you guys are actually making reference to him considering he wasn't even mentioned in the video here. As far as I know, he was one of the first ones to even bring this up in any sort of analytical sense back in the day.
"the 90 second episode of doctor who" - thats one quick episode of doctor who! Also Ive always thought this incident would of been quickly forgotten as not many people saw the 2nd hijack but the news kept showing it, many from those news interviews I doubt actually saw it broadcast during Doctor Who but just saw it on the news
Ah, “92nd episode” makes a lot more sense than “90-second episode”, which I was also puzzled about as the latter is what I originally thought was said. Watching it again, the preceding word is “the”, which I didn’t quite catch, but certainly helps clarify it.
I was nine years old when this happened. My mother was watching Dr. Who abs I heard her loudly respond to the signal intrusion. Yeah, it scared the hell out of me.
I remember them promoting the show. They had Max on a BBC news show Nationwide. He told the presenter that he would be replaced someday by a VR presenter.
I loved watching the Max Headroom series when I was little. Admittedly I was too young to full understand it, and it's only when I rewatched it relatively recently I understood the dark story that's underneath all the crazyness that happened on the show. But i have never seen the movie version - they only ever showed the series here in Denmark. And I've honestly never heard about this TV hack, although the underground groups I were in touch with back then only cracked software and didn't care about TV
I had never heard of this before . I was in my 20's and familiar with Max Headroom but not the origin side of the story . This is sooooo cool ! I LOVE IT !!
Just watched "Intrusion" after your tip. It's been a tab in my browser for ages and I finally got around to watching it today. That remix of Tears for Fears is ace. It's such and odd story though, phreaking phreakerson. ;) Thanks for all your good work!
Wow, so interesting! I was 5 in '85 and i do remember Max Headroom, even the real thing was weird as hell to a 5 yr old but this was swesome! I personally think that the first hack was possibly a trial run to ensure that the hack worked but the audio fail would have been evident to the perps and possibly expected in order to gain a better reading for the real deal at 11pm. The mystery is the real star but the "men in black" theory is brilliant, get J and K interviewed 😂😂
That interruption in broadcast also happened on WTTW public broadcast (channel 11 in Chicago) it was a Sunday night I was recording a British comic David Allen I think and then Dr Who that came on afterwards. Max Headroom was fun but that break in was strange especially for someone in 7th or 8th grade
I was in college at the time this happend studying TV production here in Chicago. You have hit the on how it was likely done. The one thing of note is that WGN engineers were in the midst of bad union negotiations. Most rumors had it as an inside job. As the pros would have been the only ones that would have had access to the gear and knowledge to pull this off.
Hijacking a tv broadcast wouldn't be that hard in the analog days, especially if you had access to military surplus. I bet this was done by some bored college kids.
@@cactusjackNV : Honestly, if I had to point at someone, I'd point in one of three directions- 1) station staff (NOT necessarily for any of the stations hit), 2) RadioShack or similar worker (92, so this would have bern around when they were getting rid of the techies), or 3) Cable/Satellite TV pirate (partly for the same reason as a RadioShack tech- the easiest way to bootstrap up to this probably would be a modified analogue satellite TV amplifier).
@@absalomdraconis what does the number 92 mean in your comment? It can't be a date because the year 1992 has no relation to this so I'm confused what it means.
I am a broadcast engineer, and I was working for the NBC affiliate in San Francisco at the time. You need to know what a mobile Ku satellite uplink truck was. I believe someone with on of those used the large steerable dish on the truck and the 300 watts plus of a standard uplink to overwhelm the 13 GHz STL receivers of both stations. But WGN was wealthy enough to have two separate STLs. One of them was in the 13 GHz band. The other was a dedicated coaxial cable they ha used before they installed their microwave STL. WTTW was unable to do anything for another reason -- they had no choice of STLs. I believe this was a satellite uplink truck aiming at those two tall buildings from some distance away. As for the video they used, my guess is that it played from a 3/4 inch U-Matic possibly one of the BVU series cassette machines that were also common in the TV news business at the time. The TWT (travelling wave tube) amplifier that feeds the uplink antenna is a wideband amplifier, and if someone disconnected the 14 GHz thing called an exciter, and connected a portable 13 GHz shoebox remote microwave transmitter (also common in the TV news business) to that TWT, that little shoebox (which is frequency agile) could well have done the job. As for the sound -- that shoebox has a sound channel (called a subcarrier) for the sound associated with the video. But the subcarrier frequency did not match up with the frequency WGN was using, thus the silence. But WTTW was using a subcarrier closer to the frequency of that little shoebox microwave transmitter, and that's why there was some very distorted audio. FYI jamming a television station's STL is a very serious legal offense and could result in many years behind bars for whoever did it. And I don't think there is any statute of limitations on intentional jamming like this. Think international radio treaty violation stuff. Email to rgetsla@yahoo.com if you want more detail from my knowledge base of analog broadcast television.
When I saw the intro, I was like, "Oh, I've heard of this already." When you added the technical properties of how they did it and the context of the incident, it showed a different side of the case. I'm still surprised that nobody has been caught or taken responsibility for this hack.
Ive always been curious as to why this incident is commonly described as "disturbing". I mean, pirate radio stations and radio broadcast interruptions were common in the 70s and 80s, so it really shouldnt have been so far out of the realms of possibility that someone wouldnt have been able to figure out how to do the same with TV transmissions. As for the content of the broadcast, its just funny and weird, not like its some sort of terrorist threat or warning of impending doom or something.
Great video, and the evil bert video too. I recall max headroom back in the day, looked a really cool wacky idea, but i don't see much until TH-cam came along. Some good investigating. Keep the videos rolling.
I stumbled on this Max Headroom incident years ago more or less by chance. Since I'm not American or Brit, I had no frame of reference to who Max was or what any of this meant. And I still found it creepy tbh
30:32 I don't think the distorted audio was necessarily an intended effect. It sounds more like distortion coming from an improperly tuned Single Side Band.
I’m thinking that the female is wearing a mistress-styled bondage outfit which would go along with the ass spanking. This could be interpreted as a dig at the sports-caster’s or the actual Max character’s masculinity, or perhaps their integrity. Btw I’m guessing that the clear video depicting the behind-the-scenes setup is not actual footage but a recreation?
Though i've learned about max headroom since, he completely passed me by as a kid. I was born 1978 so I guess it was just a wee bit before my time. Or maybe it was just something that never reached Sweden where I grew up.
I first learned about this event 2 years ago and since then I've wanted to do something like this myself. The problem is, while I could probably learn how to override the new digital tv signal, I don't think I could get away with it.
That corrugated metal background didn’t look held. It looks like it’s pivoting in the centre. Plus it would have got heavy to hold at arms length over that time. I think more planning went into this. It takes real effort to get something looking this rough. But the simplest explanation is normally the right one, so I’m going for a disgruntled Channel 11 employee.
I saw the original PBS incident live. It's a legend in the local hacking community and everyone had an opinion on who did it. Doubtful we'll ever know who was responsible.
Back in 1997 - I know it was then because Lady Di died during this event - I worked for IBM in Sydney, and Channel 7 had outsourced their system management to us. Novel Netware 4 - which was dominant in networking back then, before Windows killed it off - had just been released, and the I.T. person in Brisbane had upgraded from Netware 3.11 incorrectly, so I went up there to clean up the mess. As is often the case in I.T. I had to work late at night when no one was using the systems, and back then Channel 7 just relayed the Sydney broadcast in the late evening. I was kicking off giant data copies, then I'd have nothing to do for a few hours, so I would just be wandering around the empty building - there was a security guard, but after a few nights he trusted me - and if I'd known what I was doing, and didn't care about my job or career, I certainly could have cut their broadcast, or popped in a tape and transmitted something. The point being that security was incredibly lax, and I'm sure that in the 80's things were even more casual, so this probably wouldn't have been too hard to pull off?
I remember hearing about this back in ‘88 with the hacking and phone freaking community across the Commadore 64 scene when I was just 6 all the way down here in Australia. It’s creepy but fuckin hilarious I’d forgotten about it up until mow and never see the footage. I dunno if the Trunp mask with a pair of glasses cuts it as a Headroom mask though, A for effort though! It is a little unsettling because you don’t know who it is, but that’s the charm of it, it’s just someone taking the piss. If I had scene this live at that age I would have found it hilarious. I was captivated by this story for a few days, as down here we never had Max host any shows or do any ads; just the main shit that trickled down like everything else. After discussing it since I realise not many people here my age even have heard of Max Headroom, which makes me wonder what the hell they thought the whole Cafe 80’s back to the future scene was all about? I thought everyone across the western world understood the reference, seemingly not. So does his brother wearing the other glove have any reference to Michael Jackson wearing a single white glove and doing a Pepsi commercial?? What was creepier than this was seeing the max headroom parody on the Mad Magazine cover! Makes sense why we never saw the Coca Cola ad here, Pepsi has never been nearly as popular as Coca Cola. Maybe Coke did get the memo.
The "disruption of the planned program" made me kick the TV stand and made the TV hit the carpet when I was a kid.. With only one national TV broadcaster they decided to live transmit a football playoff thereby canceling favorite children's TV show for the evening...
The only modern day equivalent is ‘MeiAids’ the guy that hacked TH-cam which even affected Justin Beiber. May these guys never be found, only passed on in memory.
Late local station tv was just spooky for some reason back then. There were a lot of low budget, local business commercials that were quirky and sporadic, changed all the time, that were hastily copied over and spliced on pre recorded tapes. Many times several seconds of an old comercial would play that wasnt ment to be shown. It might have taken people a while to catch on it was a hack.
Videos like this leave two (equally disturbing) thoughts: 1. The perpetrators could be in this comment section, chuckling away at our theories 2. It could actually be aliens? xD
Based on the way the distortion in the picture exists during the hijacking and does not appear afterwards suggests that it was the video signal sent by the hijacker that was not perfect. Whilst I could believe that the dropped lines is due to interference with the original material, the skew at the top of the image shows that the timing of those lines not to be correct. In my option this is most likely caused by a video tape player (misaligned heads, as another commentator has mentioned) as other ways of causing skew would not limit it to the top few lines.
Great video! Ive seen most of the stuff here on YT about this, and your video actually had a bunch of interesting takes and a different perspective on quite a bit of this. Ive always been interested in the Max Headroom TV hack. I grew up right outside of Chicago in NW Indiana, and I clearly remember my older brother and family watching Max Headroom back in the day. I dont know why everyone was so mad when this happened, I would of been blown away as you could just tell that this is something you dont see everyday. Any of the early hacking stuff is very interesting too as its not the same as today with just downloading some programs and letting them go. Someone had to put in a bit of work.
My theory is it was a bunch of high school av club nerds. As for the audio distortion, it sounds a lot like ring modulation or some kind of high frequency amplitude modulation.
Wow about the theory that the first hack WASN'T disrupted. I went into this video thinking, "I've seen this; cool story." You're right: I've NEVER heard ANYBODY suggest that, and your evidence suggests it could be true. Great video!
14:55 Solidarity was the name (and logo, as used in the hijacking) of the movement (the trade union you referred to) that led to the downfall of the communist regime.
This is a fantastic analysis of the incident! Well done! Thoroughly enjoyed it. I agree with you that it's best that it remains an unsolved and fascinating piece of TV history.
@@Zontar82 I mean, if you have ever "listened" to an analog video signal, that's pretty much what it sounds like: a high pitch whine with a clicky flutter
I always found Max Headrooms sounded like Jim Carey. Jim could've easily brought back Max. I remember Max from M Tv and then he disappeared. There's a music 'dance' business men group from Japan that make them move like an army of Max Headroom moving guys. They're called "New World Order" ironically.
I wasn't watching TV this night but know many who watched WGN news and Doctor Who. My parents watched Dave Allen At Large which came on right before Doctor Who and just missed it. Anyway, I used to work in broadcasting and attended Columbia College in Chicago and this would come up in conversations. One of the conversations was interesting because one of my classmates stated she knew who the culprits were. It should be pointed out that Columbia at this time (talking early-mid 90s) was what I call a "professional college" in that people already working in their field were in school for a degree so many of my classmates already worked in broadcasting. Long story short she stated that the person who pulled it off (at least the person who was able to hack) was someone with experience as a broadcast engineer or related. I kind of believe this, to be honest. The theory being when she stated this that the person didn't come forward because they were still working in the field and knew someone like this would likely mean an end to their career. Now assuming this is true, the person is likely close to retirement and maybe if they retire will come forward, assuming they are still living. I've heard recently that the person suspected of being the hack passed away. I actually don't think anyone involved will come forward though because of fear of criminal charges (Not likely at this point) or fear.
According to the station, no one on the outside could've pulled it off, both because of the technical know how and the equipment needed. But according to the FBI, anyone could've done it. You could build the equipment out of regular parts. So who's right?
Yes they could have easily as everything was raw back then no encoding like today We could even easily steal sat signals for cable back then so wouldn't be hard to send Any techy guy back then could build the parts from radioshack in those days And he could have even bounced the signals being able to hit both stations
I worked in radio when younger, and we had our microwave link unintentionally hacked by another station. Working one night, and all of a sudden we are outputting religious programming. Couldn't figure out where it was coming from, so we shut down the signal. Came to find out a religious station about 20 miles away had recently realigned their microwave dish from their studio to their tower, but the overshoot of their signal was now in line with our microwave receiver. It just happened to be weather conditions led to our signal from studio to tower being slightly less powerful than theirs at our tower, and the microwave repeater locked in on the next strongest signal, which happened to be theirs. Our engineers and theirs worked together, and resolved it by them turning down their power just a bit, and us turning ours up a bit.
![ลองสุ่มไอโฟน 990 โกงมั้ย? [ โกงมั้ยครับ ep.101 ] | DOM](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/bfsWe0j492k/mqdefault.jpg)
Hey folks. Thanks for watching maaaa video. Hope you're doing well. Go to thld.co/munkpack_nerd_0722 and use code NERD to get 20% off your first purchase! Thanks to Munk Pack for sponsoring today’s video!
Is there a UK supplier of these Munk Pack bars ?
Nazi is left and not conservati
@@tiagopereirasantossilva556 No. Nazi is extreme right-wing.
10:33 90sec episode?
should have also mentioned that Munkpack is US only
Broadcast TV hacking is especially interesting because it's such a niche area of expertise and utilizes a lot of hardware that isn't common or readily available, even to serious amateurs. I miss the days when the world was a little more open to "experimentation"
My dad made a pirate radio station once. In his youth. But it was probably only in a small radius since he hadn access to hi power radio gear. But it was enough to put a vinyl on inside and listen to it outside on a transistor radio at the lake.
I don’t know, I had the skills as a kid who built myself a pirate radio station in the early 90s (I was a broadcast nerd with subscriptions to & copies of all the engineering magazines for radio & TV broadcasting) and knew others who probably could as well, though not in Chicago.
Lots of this stuff is in the ARRL handbook, but those analog STLs were dead simple and with a little time & money, you can tweak things not intended for the purpose or build your own. Not trivial to everyone, but something anyone who’s really into this with a bit of time could figure out IF they had access to the right parts & equipment (most people simply don’t care enough to know).
Those STL transmitters & receivers were made for STLs and were expensive, but it’s basic tech and any microwave or VHF experience (depending on which system they used) could be used here.
They had all sorts of cheaper equipment that could be modified, like the local microwave systems they used to use for premium television regionally using microwave antennas & receivers - those were readily available for cheap in ‘87 as those systems lost money and cable pretty much killed them off, so surplus was there cheap in a place like Chicago by ‘87.
You could get all sorts of stuff if you tried. Local radio stations used to give me old gear all the time, when I was 10-15 or so. Surplus stores existed then as well, all over every metro area.
So it really could be anyone, it certainly didn’t require a professional.
Honestly, if I remember the frequencies right, then you could probably have done it with just an amplifier for analogue satellite TV (which yes, was a thing- some of the satellites might even still be active... maybe). You basically need a VCR, a frequency shifter, an amplifier, and an antenna- and if you got the right amplifier, then you'd be able to either use it straight, or modify it for the purpose, while also using it _as_ the frequency shifter. This sort of thing wasn't really used to hijack TV stations much, but there was a low-key TV-theft market for both cable and satellite TV from almost the moment they were created.
@@absalomdraconis this is what I was thinking! A portable VCR such as for portable non-camcorders could’ve fit in a backpack along with the satellite TV signal booster wired backwards.
@@filminginportland1654 decades ago , playing around with an old CB radio wondering what the cans did inside, And a neighbor that was into tweaking radios , found outgrocery store parking lot and fast food restaurants with their headsets or parking under phone lines, If the signal is not focused properly it bleeds on to other channelsThe employees would be laughing but ask us to stop, oh yeah we got in trouble sometimes but it was fun, we didn’t know that’s what it did or would do,These phones and internet nowadays ,wouldn’t be affected, had to be in the drive-through or very close to the store , it was long ago they probably have better radios and communication now, tweaked CB radios don’t last long ,they all fried, Back in the 90s when the truckers came over the hill into Reno they were in for a comedy show especially on the weekends at night
The fuzzymemories clip was (at some stage) a Betamax recording, that bending at the top of the frame is standard Betamax tape wear. There is no VHS involved, as there is no head-switching in the bottom of the frame. The 'wobble' at the start and end of the intrusion is also standard Betamax behavior when using butt-joint or pause-button, or when sync needs to be adjusted. You can recreate this by switching channels on the internal tuner while recording - the same happens on some VHS machines, but not as clearly. Best stick to the uMatic (timestamped) log recordings from the station itself, as the consumer recording is clearly not reliable.
I've read that Betamax was the industry standard in the states, so that fits.
@@lordsofkobol7385 Betacam was a professional format, Betamax was the consumer grade, both by Sony. They are not comparable despite the name.
@@thestarlitwaters Also not to mention that Betacam wasn't only an industry standard in the US. Though I'm somewhat confused by their assumedly derogatory comment anyhow. Fits what exactly? Though I guess they are just being like "America uses crappy video cuz they r crappy country, tee hee, ha ha" like a 5 year old.
so basically… he was a hipster 😳
@@kandigloss6438 You assume too much. It does not read derogatory at all. Chill out.
I saw the second broadcast live and had it on VHS tape for years. My family were big Doctor Who fans and watched every Sunday on Channel 11(and taped them). So 9 year old me got to see this rare historical event. Was weird then and is still weird today
High five, I was 16 and I saw it happen live. I feel like we are members of a very small club.
@@JimLeonard yup - i'm jealous you got to see it "for real" im not gonna lie
Another high five! I too got to experience the WTTW hack during Doctor Who. I was only half watching the TV when "WTF?!" and was wondering if someone dosed 17 year-old me.
What a lucky thing that your parents had such great taste in Sci Fi! Getting it on tape is downright legendary. Honestly having the collection of Dr who on tape is not too shabby in itself!
Same. I might still have the tape stashed at my mom's house.
I just love that lady who is mildly perturbed that she is go to have to do some VCR editing of her Dr Who recording. Perfect little moment in time.
Does she now realise that the tape is far more interesting with the Max Headroom intrusion?
@@wayland7150 Lol, maybe. But you know that she probably(definitely) recorded over it.
I've seen the clip before, but never seen the reactions from the viewers on the news... I kinda find the reactions more interesting than the intrusion itself, it's as though something breached reality and punishment is in order.
@@captain_red_beard4202 Not just that but also dumped the tape a few years later bc it was too worn out.
This Dr Who fan would have been startled & intrigued by the intrusion but also enraged that my Dr Who had been interrupted.
I remember hearing about this when I was young. We are in the WGN market. Fun fact, Dan Roan just retired from WGN on May 26, 2022 after 38 years.
Same
Frickin' Liberal....
The first one Is creepy especially for people who don't know who Max Headroom Is
Remember this was before the Internet, before smart phones, Just you and a TV remote In the dark late at night and this happens
exactly, younger people will have difficulties imaging that, but for us it would have been a fucking heart attack
and the tv guide magazine
You had a remote?
As someone who remembers pre Internet times I can honestly say it would have definitely freaked me out
Pre internet was the best free life.
I saw this live as an 8 year old. It spooked the shit out of me and still does. It is my earliest concrete memory.
So it was YOU?!
Your earliest memory is 8? I've got solid memories well before kindergarten. I recall peeing myself as a toddler while sleeping and it feeling sooooo good.
@@billschlafly4107 nice congrats
@@billschlafly4107
Weird flex but OK.
@@Persun_McPersonson
For what it's worth, I vividly remember being around 7 and sleepwalking and mistaking my bed for the toilet. I woke up as I was in the middle of standing before my bed, pissing on it. Felt weird man
I lived in Brighton Park by 43rd and Western. I can remember my Grandpa, (RIP) yelling my Grandma's(RIP) name saying "MARY! MARY! HES BACK AND GETTING HIS ASS SWATTED!!" I was 9 at the time, had just gotten dropped off at their house when my mom went to work. I heard a lot of talk about it the next couple days, but I didn't have a concept of how cool of a moment it was. I later saw a YT of it 8 or 9 years ago and it all came back to me.
LMAOOO
I live in Brighton park too, 38th and kedzie. I also seen it live
Lmao
43rd & Artesian let’s all meet at Naples and smoke a blunt
@@italianbeefslayer my best friend Frank lived on Artesian between 43rd and 44th. Back in 88. And Francine Aldaco. She was yum. Is Julia's restaurant still there on Western? And Moonlighters? My grandma owned both of those back in the day.
The audio distortion is characteristic of a "ring modulator," which mixes an incoming audio signal with a second signal (usually a sine or square wave) using a diode ring similar to (but not the same as) a full-wave DC rectifier. The hacker knew that this would disguise his voice in a way that couldn't be de-scrambled, at least with the technology available at the time. Ring modulators were a cheap and simple way to thoroughly disguise a voice without completely destroying intelligibility.
They were also used on the show he was interrupting, Dr. Who.
Would it be possible to undo that kind of distortion with software?
Thanks! This Will did not know 😊
@@Houshalter It's probably possible to undo it in software, but probably not to the extent necessary to identify the speaker. It depends on how accurately the original audio waveform is preserved today.
Was this before digitized text to speech?
My two favourite broadcast intrusions were:
1. The one where somebody managed to put an Emergency Broadcast System alert on screen and over the speakers warning of zombies.
2. Somebody hijacked a camera that fed a "peaceful imagery" channel and used CGI to make it look like a nuclear bomb was going off at that location
Edit: The zombies one wasn't technically a broadcast intrusion, somebody hacked into the EAS decoder at the station. It has an amusing postscript though - when another TV station reported on the incident, they inadvertantly replayed the burst of coded information at the start of the false alert, which propagated it automatically to another TV station and caused a second false alert!
Hilarious!
"...not very bright realy..."
well we are still talking about it 40 years later (and they were never caught)....so......id say it was VERY BRIGHT! dudes a legend, and a hero, 100%
I feel like someday somebody’s gonna find the original camcorder tape of the incident in a Goodwill bin somewhere near Chicago.
After decades, the statute of limitations has to have expired. Why doesn't this absolute legend come forward? I remember learning about this in the mid 90s when I was just getting into computers and the fledgling internet. I was getting into phone phreaking and simple hacks on school computers. The idea of hijacking an entire TV station blew my mind. This person is a real life Zero Cool only they took it a step further than just changing what show was on. They put on their own homemade show, as creepy as it is. I was fascinated by this story back then. This is the best documentary style video I've ever seen on it and had a lot of new ideas and information I had never heard before. It's also done in an objective way that doesn't try to sensationalize anything. Well done, NN.
Like the Zero Cool reference. Hack the planet! 😂 Possibly concerns for civil lawsuit or their current position would be compromised.
Την κατάλληλη στιγμή. Παρακαλώ περιμένετε.
He's probably dead.
Might be dead
@@Legend813a In the US of A, copyright laws protect that which has been created for 70 years after the death of the original creator. It's harder to prove in court if the creation hasn't been registered. Either way, the answer to your premise is "no". Someone can't just grab Max Headroom and run with it yet without risk of being sued. There are exceptions such as satire that fall under fair use because freedom of speech exists in the US of A.
Quite a comprehensive look at the hacking incidents. With regard to the "signal distortion" in the VHS copy of the WGN hack, I believe the stretching and overall instability were the result of flaws in either the VCR that was used to record or play back the off air broadcast. The distortion at the top of the picture is known as "skew", and is caused either by misalignment of the tape as it was being recorded, or by a misaligned playback deck used when the footage was digitized. As for the rolling horizontal lines, I think it's a combination of the hijacker's program material and time based errors caused by the VCR doing the off air recording. During points when lines appear but the overall picture remains steady, it's likely the program material. However, when the screen jumps along with the lines I believe it's a result of timing errors in the signal. VCRs of the day didn't offer any sort of built in time based correction, so when the video sync signal abruptly changes as the picture goes to black (likely at the instant the engineers switched frequencies), it causes the VCR to go crazy as it attempts to resync from the Max signal to the WGN signal, resulting in the rolling lines you see as it goes black, right before finally stabilizing. If you ever use a simple A/V switch box, you may notice the picture vertically roll quickly as you switch sources, which is caused by a change in the sync timing of the sources. If you record this with an old VCR, you'll get similar results as the continuity when Max goes black (i.e. additional horizontal lines rolling off screen and more jumping). This is not to be confused with a professional analog video switcher, in which all the sources are synced together using a reference signal, resulting in clean cuts between sources. One of our city's low end local channels uses the basic switch box approach, and I've recorded it off air on VHS in the past. It's one of those full page info graphic deals mixed with actual footage. I would get the same jumpy instability when they switched from graphics to footage. I've seen some public access stations do this as well. This was definitely the most interesting broadcast highjacking to date, and this video goes into great detail. Great job on doing it justice.
This happened when I was a kid and it scared the crap out of me seeing it on the news. I was terrified to watch TV for months because I was afraid this would happen! 🤣
30:29 They clearly used ring modulation on the voices. They could have used a guitar pedal for that, but there are other means to get the same effect.
Probably a coincidence, but a similar form of voice modulation was done to voice the Daleks from _Doctor Who._ Again, probably not related, but if the second hack was part of the plan (which seems likely since they clearly knew the frequency and direction with little effort), then it might also tie into why that particular programming block was chosen. All just rampant speculation of course.
@@scaper8 : If I had to guess, the second station was probably a backup, for signal strength and/or staffing reasons.
So my understanding is that a ring modulator takes in two signals and out puts both the sum and difference between the two. So if the effect was caused by feeding the mic through a ring modulator it would be the audio and some sort of carrier signal into the modulator... but shouldn't that mean you can then reverse the effect once you know the carrier signal?
If someone could pull that off they could clean up the audio
Yes! I keep wondering why nobody has done this yet!
@@aaronhazelwood6489
It's not that easy. The type of ring modulation used for sound manipulation leads to a heavily mutated spectral mess. It gets even worse when you add other noise as well, like from a magnetic video tape.
WGN's call letters do come from "World's Greatest NewsPAPER". The station(s) were owned by the Chicago Tribune. The Tribune had been using the slogan "World's Greatest Newspaper" for decades bofore entering the broadcasting business.
I love this so much. It just scratches all my itches - tech, radio, broadcast piracy, intrigue, local lore .. chef’s kiss.
Likewise, ticks all the boxes
I just love that someone hacked a TV signal using a ZX Spectrum in the set-up!
I never knew it was possible
@@locke103 The ZX Spectrum outputs a standard TV video output, I used the US Version (Timex/Sinclair 2068) to make titles and animations for "home videos" in the 1980s
@@jamesslick4790 I was young back then, born in 1984. My journey into computers did start at four years old, though. Dad had an Apple II GS, lured me in with gaming, coincidentally.
Old school hackers were the coolest. Phone freaking still blows me away
@@locke103 1984 here. Respect.
I recall reading about this incident on Wikipedia as a kid. Not many Wikipedia articles has disturbed me as this one. I still felt uneasy watching this. Cannot even begin imagine expiriencing this live. Great video
This doesn't disturb me, it's one of the greatest moments in television history.
I live in Chicago, so my now-fiance and I knew at least vaguely of this incident. I ended up referencing it in my Doctor Who RPG campaign, saying it was the work of a shapeshifting alien. Then I looked it up and realized that the hack happened during an episode of Doctor Who, and we all laughed for several minutes straight. Only upon watching this video have I learned that the Doctor Who episode in question involved...a shapeshifting alien. Gotta love it.
Gotta love those long play syncs!
23
That's serendipitous!
@@Fuzzamajumula no, that's the matrix
@@ConnectTheDotsProper fr people just brush this stuff off like it's nothing 😂🙈👽
I can only imagine the thrill of planning and pulling this off! Based on the speculations I've seen online, it wouldnt have been trivial.
yup - these were some knowledgable ppl doing this - and funny - i would have liked to be friends with them
The knowledge needed would not have been easily available at the time. Nor would the equipment. There are only two groups of people who would have both of these: Someone from within the television industry - perhaps an engineer who appropriated some scrap heading for disposal. Or a ham radio operator, who would have the skill to build their own equipment. Probably the former.
@@vylbird8014 If you are saying that it would have been hard to generate an NTSC video signal and overpower an un-encoded analog channel, I'm going to go out on a limb disagree.
And why would a hammie (radio enthusiast) have any special knowledge of UHF and VHF channels? You must realize that this is just the kind of stuff that electrical engineers everywhere would study in college, right? Don't you think that people knew anything before the Internet?
@@kurtpena5462 Because they didn't just overpower the TV transmitter: They overpowered the uplink coming from the studio to the transmitter. That was a microwave link. So you need to generate your NTSC video signal, modulate that onto a microwave carrier in the appropriate manner, and send that to the transmitter. Can't do that with consumer equipment: You're going to need to either obtain your own very specialised modulator and amplifier, or construct one from components.
Most uplinks were microwave, yes, but if you were the sort of person who could build vhf transmitters then building a little exciter using the front end of a uhf TV and some other bits and bobs was much of a stretch... When i was a kid i never knew this stuff happened but when i read about it years later it blew my mind that someone could do that to something that seemed so impossible to do.
When I was really little, I used to get in trouble for sneaking up and going and turning on the TV and watching Max Headroom. I was convinced he was from the future and had all the answers to everything I ever wanted to know. I was only 3 or 4 lol but I was attracted to that TV like a poltergeist was calling to me from it. When I watch it now as an adult it seems so silly but when I was little I really believed he was an important person 😂
I did something similar, when I was around 6-7 and heard another brick in the wall, I really thought kids didn’t want education and I agreed.
I wouldn't call him a Dollar Store Max Headroom. He was at least up to Spirit Halloween level!
I find it pretty weird how outraged people got, even the people interviewed by the news. People should’ve just had a good laugh and be thankful that Max Headroom exposed a security issue with something kinda fun and weird before someone else could’ve put hardcore porn or even a live torture/murder or something like that , that would actually give everybody good reason to be outraged about. Thanks Max Headroom! 😉👍
"Some ppl will be so dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it... Morpheus, The Matrix. Sheep don't like it when their routine is disturbed.
Yeah ANOTHER SI=OP CREATED BY THE ELITES TO ADVERTISE THIS CHARACTER AND IT WORKS BEAUTIFULLY DIDN'T IT HUMANS ALWAYS FALLING FOR THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER AGAIN!!!
For a lot of people at the time, this tech was kinda magic. Not everyone; not by a long shot - there were probably as many people (percentage-wise) in the US who could have pulled this off as there are people today who can build a good PC gaming rig. I was in my late 20s at the time this happened, and just out of the military where I had further refined my RF technical knowledge after I spent my teen years messing about with radios and even early hobbyist computers. At the time, I considered this "incident" to be rather trivial and amusing. Honestly, I still do.
But I was a definite outlier compared to people such as my parents - or grandparents - who would have had some difficulty wrapping their heads around the most basic RF concepts necessary to pull off an interception like this. And - again, at the time - they were the vast majority of people living in the US. Pure, mid-tier "Baby Boomers"; the largest in raw numbers population bulge this nation has ever seen. Their attitudes and perceptions WERE "reality", no matter how actual reality worked otherwise.
If it were me, I would have broadcast a nuclear attack EAS message. "MULTIPLE MEGATON CLASS SOVIET WEAPONS HAVE BEEN SPOTTED ON EARLY WARNING RADAR AS BEING INBOUND TO THE GREATER CHICAGO AREA. TAKE SHELTER IMMEDIATELY". Ya know, like the Hawaii prank
I was 16 when this happened. This happened during the Cold War. Shit like this freaked people out. For them it was scary.
I remember back in the day this one hacking group gave me whole instructions on how to make my tv signal but avoided legally not writing that you could hack other channels. I remember a lot of equipment. I miss those old days. I feel like people knew more back then.
i’m fascinated by broadcast intrusions, i find most of them terrifying but i actually find this one hilarious. if the guy didn’t talk id probably find it scary
I'll imagine nobody came forward because they believe no one would believe them and they have probably destroyed and or lost all evidence linking them to the incident. That's what I would think if I had done something like this.
My guess is the first broadcast was a test to test whether they could do it, and maybe to see what the response is from a studio with active staff would be.
As fan of the (real) Max, this is fascinating. Pseudo-Max's voice actually sounds a lot like a Dalek. And the woman's costume in "Horror of Fang Rock" is oddly reminiscent of "Picnic at Hanging Rock".
I've already watched a lot of coverage of the Max Headroom incident, but if Nerd is talking about it I'm gonna take the time to watch. Really love the way you present the weirder side of our technical history.
Maybe Bert is behind the Max Headroom incident, as well as the Dodelston messages??
I don't think it was a technician at WGN, as the intrusion occurred on 2 different frequencies broadcasting from different locations. The equipment needed could have been obtained for much less than $10K at the time. Military surplus stores, and ham radio shops sold everything needed. It certainly had to be someone with decent knowledge of frequency intrusion, and would have required a lot of power for a short period, but the actual knowledge of channel frequencies and location of broadcast was readily available. I agree with you that the 2 people filming were probably the only people involved, as if more were involved then someone would have admitted it by now. The mystery is what's kept it alive this long.
i remember the Headroom incidents so clearly from my late teens .. funny though, what i remember as well is that they were considered to be almost big news 'terrorist' attacks at the time (I personally thought it was awesome). Amazing in hindsight just how innocent we were in the 80's. lol.
Really fresh look at this incident. I was watching WGN that night and it really freaked me out. I've watched blips about it pop up ever since....your look was the best and most logically done that i've seen.
I'd always heard "my piles" as "my files" which imo makes more sense as max headroom being an AI or newsrooms having files of reference materials
Correct!
Obviously its piles because he then says there's a mess on the floor /SHIT.
Play on words
Yeah. He's not calling chuck out he is mocking Dan Roan and saying it as if it's something Dan would say about Chuck. Also the original laid over translation is clearly wrong in a couple spots. He says "footprints" on the gloves and says "mas-turd-piece"
I always thought that "he's a frickin nerd" was referring to the doctor, but your idea does make sense too
Ah, the good old analogue TV days when this kind of crap was relatively easy, the only catches being getting the frequency and whether the link used VSB or FM modulation. If VSB, then the modulator in the back of a VCR is a good start, add a preamp or two, a crude frequency shifter and finally a microwave PA. The PA being potentially the trickiest, however there would have been kits available - whilst targeted at the amateur/ham radio fraternity, was far from impossible. The other source could have been an old decommissioned link transmitter picked up from a radio swap-meet. The hardest bit, test equipment and the knowledge to align it all.
Total cost $100
These days with digital and fibre links, way way harder
for some reason what I find the most spooky is that we will likely never, ever learn who did this...and we certainly won't learn why.
36:13 I don't get it. I'd imagine anybody could buy metal like that. The actual scene was probably filmed in a basement though it's possible that even a normal room would work.
Yeah it seems almost like the investigator stretching to have _something_ to put in his reports.
I remember when Max appeared on TV in the 80's. It never occurred to me that Max Headroom meant how much room there was below a barrier. Duh. Hahaha
Thanks for covering! Public broadcast hijacks are always fascinating.
Not even hijacks, but in general things were much looser.
A tv station ran an unedited broadcast of Lifeforce late one night (which I was blessed to see).
And always welcome 😂
This guy knew a LOT about broadcasting if he didn't work in the industry he sure found a way to get a firm understanding of many of it's intriqencies, it does seem to be done by hobbiest, whoever or whatever he was this was his masterpiece...it does make me think there was a broader message that was intended.
It could also have been more than one guy. One guy to produce the content, and another co-conspirator to feed the signal into the feed horn. The second person perhaps being an employee in the TV business (possibly still working in the business nowadays, maybe fearing to lose his job if his identity is revealed, even though he can't be fined any more). There might even have been another person who had access to the roof of the John Hancock Building - getting a transmitter directly in front of a fee horn would have been an option to overpower the legit signal with a rather small transmitter. On the other hand, a few closed doors would, quite possibly, not present any seriously challenge to anyone with basic experience in non-destructive entry methods.
I don't believe there was rhyme nor reason behind this at all: It was simply because they could.
I think if you look at the preponderance of nonsense in internet culture today, we can see what people will do for a little bit of limelight - and what anonymity empowers people to do, just as the mask here did for "Max".
Edglelords gonna edgelord.
Edgelord aside, the best hacks are the harmless versions of "because one can" hacks.
It's a proto-shitpost, so to speak.
@@Skarry I would agree, but this was not a victimless crime: People missed Doctor Who for this: DOCTOR WHO!!1!
yeah, it reminds me of very early internet content. It's honestly not that weird or disturbing to me. Just rapid fire nonsense from someone having a laugh. All the analogue distortion makes it probably creepier to us more used to high definition
@@rossstewart9475 actually... You're right. Thank you for the perspective. I used to be more of a whovian and I forgot to consider the affect on my former fellow travelers.
The Oddity Archive's inaugural episode delves more into the incident.
Indeed, which is still one of Benny Boy's best episodes. Also it's such a criminally underrated YT channel that deserves way more subs, and views.
Looks like OA also has a followup from four years ago that is twice as long but has less views than their original ten year old video. Perhaps I’ll watch both. Already very familiar with the incident though.
That man needs more attention. Been subscribe to him for a decent amount of time now. Kind of funny any of you guys are actually making reference to him considering he wasn't even mentioned in the video here. As far as I know, he was one of the first ones to even bring this up in any sort of analytical sense back in the day.
I was thinking about that channel too!
@@r66fplaysgames Funny your comment pops up, as I just got done watching his latest episode 10 sec ago on a Minnesota thrift hunt. 😅
"the 90 second episode of doctor who" - thats one quick episode of doctor who!
Also Ive always thought this incident would of been quickly forgotten as not many people saw the 2nd hijack but the news kept showing it, many from those news interviews I doubt actually saw it broadcast during Doctor Who but just saw it on the news
No not 90 seconds. 92nd. It is Doctor Who Episode #92.
@@TabbyTimeOut I think the OP knew that but was just making a joke.
@@scaper8 Oh, I literally heard ninety second and was very, very confused. xD
Ah, “92nd episode” makes a lot more sense than “90-second episode”, which I was also puzzled about as the latter is what I originally thought was said. Watching it again, the preceding word is “the”, which I didn’t quite catch, but certainly helps clarify it.
Glad I wasn't the only one that heard that sentence wrong
Took an embarrassing amount of brainpower to realise what he meant
I was nine years old when this happened. My mother was watching Dr. Who abs I heard her loudly respond to the signal intrusion. Yeah, it scared the hell out of me.
I remember them promoting the show. They had Max on a BBC news show Nationwide. He told the presenter that he would be replaced someday by a VR presenter.
8:50 well to me, the "real" news guy trying to put up a silly excuse for the tv signal hijack looks even weirder than Max Headroom himself
right after seeing the "scary" hijacker with his mask the news reporter afterwards gave me a REALLY weird uncanny feeling. He looks halfway unnatural
@@rgerber his heavy makeup definitely gave him an uncanny valley effect!
I loved watching the Max Headroom series when I was little. Admittedly I was too young to full understand it, and it's only when I rewatched it relatively recently I understood the dark story that's underneath all the crazyness that happened on the show. But i have never seen the movie version - they only ever showed the series here in Denmark. And I've honestly never heard about this TV hack, although the underground groups I were in touch with back then only cracked software and didn't care about TV
the video by The Bizarre on this is AMAZING - and waaaay under-viewed - glad it got a shout-out
I had never heard of this before . I was in my 20's and familiar with Max Headroom but not the origin side of the story . This is sooooo cool ! I LOVE IT !!
Just watched "Intrusion" after your tip. It's been a tab in my browser for ages and I finally got around to watching it today. That remix of Tears for Fears is ace. It's such and odd story though, phreaking phreakerson. ;) Thanks for all your good work!
Wow, so interesting! I was 5 in '85 and i do remember Max Headroom, even the real thing was weird as hell to a 5 yr old but this was swesome!
I personally think that the first hack was possibly a trial run to ensure that the hack worked but the audio fail would have been evident to the perps and possibly expected in order to gain a better reading for the real deal at 11pm.
The mystery is the real star but the "men in black" theory is brilliant, get J and K interviewed 😂😂
That interruption in broadcast also happened on WTTW public broadcast (channel 11 in Chicago) it was a Sunday night I was recording a British comic David Allen I think and then Dr Who that came on afterwards. Max Headroom was fun but that break in was strange especially for someone in 7th or 8th grade
Yep. I feel like a lot of people got this on tape because Doctor Who nerds(like me and my Dad) taped all the episodes that channel 11 played
Dave Allen was from the Irish Republic
I was in college at the time this happend studying TV production here in Chicago. You have hit the on how it was likely done. The one thing of note is that WGN engineers were in the midst of bad union negotiations. Most rumors had it as an inside job. As the pros would have been the only ones that would have had access to the gear and knowledge to pull this off.
Hijacking a tv broadcast wouldn't be that hard in the analog days, especially if you had access to military surplus. I bet this was done by some bored college kids.
@@cactusjackNV : Honestly, if I had to point at someone, I'd point in one of three directions-
1) station staff (NOT necessarily for any of the stations hit),
2) RadioShack or similar worker (92, so this would have bern around when they were getting rid of the techies), or
3) Cable/Satellite TV pirate (partly for the same reason as a RadioShack tech- the easiest way to bootstrap up to this probably would be a modified analogue satellite TV amplifier).
@@absalomdraconis what does the number 92 mean in your comment? It can't be a date because the year 1992 has no relation to this so I'm confused what it means.
I am a broadcast engineer, and I was working for the NBC affiliate in San Francisco at the time. You need to know what a mobile Ku satellite uplink truck was. I believe someone with on of those used the large steerable dish on the truck and the 300 watts plus of a standard uplink to overwhelm the 13 GHz STL receivers of both stations. But WGN was wealthy enough to have two separate STLs. One of them was in the 13 GHz band. The other was a dedicated coaxial cable they ha used before they installed their microwave STL. WTTW was unable to do anything for another reason -- they had no choice of STLs. I believe this was a satellite uplink truck aiming at those two tall buildings from some distance away. As for the video they used, my guess is that it played from a 3/4 inch U-Matic possibly one of the BVU series cassette machines that were also common in the TV news business at the time. The TWT (travelling wave tube) amplifier that feeds the uplink antenna is a wideband amplifier, and if someone disconnected the 14 GHz thing called an exciter, and connected a portable 13 GHz shoebox remote microwave transmitter (also common in the TV news business) to that TWT, that little shoebox (which is frequency agile) could well have done the job. As for the sound -- that shoebox has a sound channel (called a subcarrier) for the sound associated with the video. But the subcarrier frequency did not match up with the frequency WGN was using, thus the silence. But WTTW was using a subcarrier closer to the frequency of that little shoebox microwave transmitter, and that's why there was some very distorted audio. FYI jamming a television station's STL is a very serious legal offense and could result in many years behind bars for whoever did it. And I don't think there is any statute of limitations on intentional jamming like this. Think international radio treaty violation stuff. Email to rgetsla@yahoo.com if you want more detail from my knowledge base of analog broadcast television.
@@LinearBob thank you for this 👍
When I saw the intro, I was like, "Oh, I've heard of this already." When you added the technical properties of how they did it and the context of the incident, it showed a different side of the case. I'm still surprised that nobody has been caught or taken responsibility for this hack.
Great work Nostalgia Nerd - I knew only parts of this whole saga - fantastic to see it all explained :)
this incident never ceases to amaze me
Ive always been curious as to why this incident is commonly described as "disturbing". I mean, pirate radio stations and radio broadcast interruptions were common in the 70s and 80s, so it really shouldnt have been so far out of the realms of possibility that someone wouldnt have been able to figure out how to do the same with TV transmissions.
As for the content of the broadcast, its just funny and weird, not like its some sort of terrorist threat or warning of impending doom or something.
Great video, and the evil bert video too. I recall max headroom back in the day, looked a really cool wacky idea, but i don't see much until TH-cam came along. Some good investigating. Keep the videos rolling.
Nailed it, Peter. Ben at the Oddity Archive will blush when he watches this. From an old school FM engineer. You go steady now my man.
In 1987, my 12 year old self was a huge Max Headroom fan. I thoroughly enjoyed this video. Checking out the Bert is Evil video now.
I stumbled on this Max Headroom incident years ago more or less by chance. Since I'm not American or Brit, I had no frame of reference to who Max was or what any of this meant. And I still found it creepy tbh
One of the best trolls ever.
As an American alive back then I can say we got the irony of Max Headroom and Coke. It made it more futuristic. Blade runner type stuff.
30:32 I don't think the distorted audio was necessarily an intended effect. It sounds more like distortion coming from an improperly tuned Single Side Band.
I wondered something like that too, or intermod from the genuine broadcast audio carrier it's competing with?
I’m thinking that the female is wearing a mistress-styled bondage outfit which would go along with the ass spanking. This could be interpreted as a dig at the sports-caster’s or the actual Max character’s masculinity, or perhaps their integrity. Btw I’m guessing that the clear video depicting the behind-the-scenes setup is not actual footage but a recreation?
also if you see closer, that woman too has a mask
@@Zontar82 Although that could be less about the message and more just CYA in case "her" face came into frame. Hard to say one way or the other.
I suggest the sound distortion isn't an added effect, it's due to using the wrong type of modulation - AM vs FM
Amazing video. Thank you. I was 14 when Max Headroom burst into my life and I loved every bit of it. Still do.
I think the audio was specifically run through a ring modulator effect, likely an EHX Frequency Analyzer
Though i've learned about max headroom since, he completely passed me by as a kid. I was born 1978 so I guess it was just a wee bit before my time. Or maybe it was just something that never reached Sweden where I grew up.
I first learned about this event 2 years ago and since then I've wanted to do something like this myself. The problem is, while I could probably learn how to override the new digital tv signal, I don't think I could get away with it.
That corrugated metal background didn’t look held. It looks like it’s pivoting in the centre. Plus it would have got heavy to hold at arms length over that time. I think more planning went into this. It takes real effort to get something looking this rough. But the simplest explanation is normally the right one, so I’m going for a disgruntled Channel 11 employee.
I saw the original PBS incident live. It's a legend in the local hacking community and everyone had an opinion on who did it. Doubtful we'll ever know who was responsible.
Back in 1997 - I know it was then because Lady Di died during this event - I worked for IBM in Sydney, and Channel 7 had outsourced their system management to us. Novel Netware 4 - which was dominant in networking back then, before Windows killed it off - had just been released, and the I.T. person in Brisbane had upgraded from Netware 3.11 incorrectly, so I went up there to clean up the mess. As is often the case in I.T. I had to work late at night when no one was using the systems, and back then Channel 7 just relayed the Sydney broadcast in the late evening. I was kicking off giant data copies, then I'd have nothing to do for a few hours, so I would just be wandering around the empty building - there was a security guard, but after a few nights he trusted me - and if I'd known what I was doing, and didn't care about my job or career, I certainly could have cut their broadcast, or popped in a tape and transmitted something. The point being that security was incredibly lax, and I'm sure that in the 80's things were even more casual, so this probably wouldn't have been too hard to pull off?
I remember the one about HBO. I was young at the time, but I was living on Long Island.
People should do this more often before TV totally dies out
I'm like 93.8% positive that the bearded exec guy shown at 2:05 is the Architect in the Matrix.
I'm like 99.8% sure
I remember hearing about this back in ‘88 with the hacking and phone freaking community across the Commadore 64 scene when I was just 6 all the way down here in Australia.
It’s creepy but fuckin hilarious I’d forgotten about it up until mow and never see the footage.
I dunno if the Trunp mask with a pair of glasses cuts it as a Headroom mask though, A for effort though!
It is a little unsettling because you don’t know who it is, but that’s the charm of it, it’s just someone taking the piss.
If I had scene this live at that age I would have found it hilarious. I was captivated by this story for a few days, as down here we never had Max host any shows or do any ads; just the main shit that trickled down like everything else. After discussing it since I realise not many people here my age even have heard of Max Headroom, which makes me wonder what the hell they thought the whole Cafe 80’s back to the future scene was all about? I thought everyone across the western world understood the reference, seemingly not.
So does his brother wearing the other glove have any reference to Michael Jackson wearing a single white glove and doing a Pepsi commercial??
What was creepier than this was seeing the max headroom parody on the Mad Magazine cover!
Makes sense why we never saw the Coca Cola ad here, Pepsi has never been nearly as popular as Coca Cola. Maybe Coke did get the memo.
The "disruption of the planned program" made me kick the TV stand and made the TV hit the carpet when I was a kid.. With only one national TV broadcaster they decided to live transmit a football playoff thereby canceling favorite children's TV show for the evening...
"I got so upset, I really wanted to bust the TV set. I really did"
That man needed to go out and touch grass way before social media.
The only modern day equivalent is ‘MeiAids’ the guy that hacked TH-cam which even affected Justin Beiber.
May these guys never be found, only passed on in memory.
I almost forgot about that lol
Late local station tv was just spooky for some reason back then. There were a lot of low budget, local business commercials that were quirky and sporadic, changed all the time, that were hastily copied over and spliced on pre recorded tapes. Many times several seconds of an old comercial would play that wasnt ment to be shown. It might have taken people a while to catch on it was a hack.
Videos like this leave two (equally disturbing) thoughts:
1. The perpetrators could be in this comment section, chuckling away at our theories
2. It could actually be aliens? xD
Based on the way the distortion in the picture exists during the hijacking and does not appear afterwards suggests that it was the video signal sent by the hijacker that was not perfect. Whilst I could believe that the dropped lines is due to interference with the original material, the skew at the top of the image shows that the timing of those lines not to be correct. In my option this is most likely caused by a video tape player (misaligned heads, as another commentator has mentioned) as other ways of causing skew would not limit it to the top few lines.
This is the best video I've seen about this event. Well done.
Great video! Ive seen most of the stuff here on YT about this, and your video actually had a bunch of interesting takes and a different perspective on quite a bit of this.
Ive always been interested in the Max Headroom TV hack. I grew up right outside of Chicago in NW Indiana, and I clearly remember my older brother and family watching Max Headroom back in the day. I dont know why everyone was so mad when this happened, I would of been blown away as you could just tell that this is something you dont see everyday. Any of the early hacking stuff is very interesting too as its not the same as today with just downloading some programs and letting them go. Someone had to put in a bit of work.
My theory is it was a bunch of high school av club nerds. As for the audio distortion, it sounds a lot like ring modulation or some kind of high frequency amplitude modulation.
Wow about the theory that the first hack WASN'T disrupted. I went into this video thinking, "I've seen this; cool story." You're right: I've NEVER heard ANYBODY suggest that, and your evidence suggests it could be true. Great video!
14:55 Solidarity was the name (and logo, as used in the hijacking) of the movement (the trade union you referred to) that led to the downfall of the communist regime.
This is a fantastic analysis of the incident! Well done! Thoroughly enjoyed it. I agree with you that it's best that it remains an unsolved and fascinating piece of TV history.
It's not unsolved it's very solved been documented very well here on TH-cam.
I always assumed the audio was garbled because of interference from the video signal. Maybe some of both?
this same here
@@Zontar82 I mean, if you have ever "listened" to an analog video signal, that's pretty much what it sounds like: a high pitch whine with a clicky flutter
I always found Max Headrooms sounded like Jim Carey. Jim could've easily brought back Max. I remember Max from M Tv and then he disappeared. There's a music 'dance' business men group from Japan that make them move like an army of Max Headroom moving guys. They're called "New World Order" ironically.
25:12 - I always thought the 'He's a freaking nerd' bit was a stab at the Doctor Who episode that was playing at the time live on that tv channel!
Me too
It really sounds like "Oh my files" to me, but I guess that doesn't really make any more sense than "Oh my piles"
I wasn't watching TV this night but know many who watched WGN news and Doctor Who. My parents watched Dave Allen At Large which came on right before Doctor Who and just missed it. Anyway, I used to work in broadcasting and attended Columbia College in Chicago and this would come up in conversations. One of the conversations was interesting because one of my classmates stated she knew who the culprits were. It should be pointed out that Columbia at this time (talking early-mid 90s) was what I call a "professional college" in that people already working in their field were in school for a degree so many of my classmates already worked in broadcasting. Long story short she stated that the person who pulled it off (at least the person who was able to hack) was someone with experience as a broadcast engineer or related. I kind of believe this, to be honest. The theory being when she stated this that the person didn't come forward because they were still working in the field and knew someone like this would likely mean an end to their career. Now assuming this is true, the person is likely close to retirement and maybe if they retire will come forward, assuming they are still living. I've heard recently that the person suspected of being the hack passed away. I actually don't think anyone involved will come forward though because of fear of criminal charges (Not likely at this point) or fear.
According to the station, no one on the outside could've pulled it off, both because of the technical know how and the equipment needed. But according to the FBI, anyone could've done it. You could build the equipment out of regular parts. So who's right?
Watching this “ Inside job” springs to mind.
Yes they could have easily as everything was raw back then no encoding like today
We could even easily steal sat signals for cable back then so wouldn't be hard to send
Any techy guy back then could build the parts from radioshack in those days
And he could have even bounced the signals being able to hit both stations
I mean it could be anyone or it could be our good pals in the CIA doing Ops again.
I worked in radio when younger, and we had our microwave link unintentionally hacked by another station. Working one night, and all of a sudden we are outputting religious programming. Couldn't figure out where it was coming from, so we shut down the signal. Came to find out a religious station about 20 miles away had recently realigned their microwave dish from their studio to their tower, but the overshoot of their signal was now in line with our microwave receiver. It just happened to be weather conditions led to our signal from studio to tower being slightly less powerful than theirs at our tower, and the microwave repeater locked in on the next strongest signal, which happened to be theirs. Our engineers and theirs worked together, and resolved it by them turning down their power just a bit, and us turning ours up a bit.
The station experts grossly over estimated how complicated their jobs were.
Interesting timing for this video, as AMC apparently just announced a reboot of Max Headroom.
Literally just seen that. Weird.