Max Headroom incident of Nov 22, 1987

It was November 22, 1987, that the most notorious unsolved pirate television broadcast happened in Chicago. It was the Max Headroom incident.

The incident

It started during the regular newscast on WGN TV, an unaffiliated television station owned at the time by the Chicago Tribune newspaper. If you had cable TV in the ’80s, you watched Chicago Cubs games on WGN.

But at 9:14 PM on the night of November 22, sports anchor Dan Roan was covering the day’s Bears-Lions football game. Suddenly, the screen suddenly went black for 15 seconds. Then someone wearing a rubber Max Headroom mask appeared on the screen with  no understandable audio but plenty of screechy feedback. There was a sheet of what appeared to be corrugated metal roofing material in the background tilting up and down simulate the appearance of the Max Headroom TV character. It took about 30 seconds for WGN engineers to change frequencies and restore the broadcast.

When he reappeared onscreen, Dan Roan said, “If you are wondering what happened, so am I.” And then they resumed their newscast.

Two hours and one minute later, at 11:15 PM, a similar interruption occurred on WTTW, Chicago’s PBS station. The station was airing an episode of the BBC’s Doctor Who, and this time, the pranksters had working audio.

The distorted voice that appeared to be coming from Max Headroom made several jokes referring to WGN and the earlier incident. He also made a joke about New Coke, along with what may have been some inside jokes among the perpetrators. Then it ended with lewd behavior, a spanking from another person with a fly swatter with his pants down while holding the mask in view.

Most. 80s. thing. ever.

As a member of Gen. X, I find the reaction to the incident from millennials amusing. The initial signal intrusion on WGN interrupted highlights from a Chicago Bears game Jim McMahon was quarterbacking. Max Headroom was the spokesman for New Coke. In the second signal intrusion, the fake Max Headroom makes fun of that and throws a Pepsi at the camera. Coke and Pepsi were engaged in an all-out war in the 1980s, as opposed to the comfortable duopoly of today. He made reference to wearing a single glove, a possible nod to Michael Jackson, the highest-selling musician of the 80s, and a spokesman for Pepsi. And his use of the word “nerd” repeatedly as a pejorative was very consistent with the late 80s.

So, in about 90 seconds, we have Max Headroom, New Coke, the Cola Wars, and Michael Jackson. And, of course, Max Headroom. And a creepy unsolved mystery that Unsolved Mysteries would be proud of. All in glorious low fidelity.

Hearing a millennial ask, “Is this the most ’80s thing ever?” is great. It’s delightfully dated and full of stuff Stranger Things missed.

My junior high school classmates thought it was hilarious, and we got in trouble for talking about it because our teacher was extremely prude. The FCC was about as amused as our prude teacher. They promised they would find whoever did this and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.

What was Max Headroom?

Max Headroom was a short-lived late 1980s dystopian sci-fi television show. The premise of the show was that after a popular TV news reporter who disliked the way the media was used to manipulate people was injured in a motorcycle accident, they took copy of his mind, dumped it into a computer, and used artificial intelligence to bring him back. But what they got was a glitchy wisecracking parody of the original person.

Parts of the show were actually computer generated. Jeff Bruette, the former Commodore employee who taught Andy Warhol how to use a computer, consulted in the production of the show.

I remember not caring much for it the couple of times I watched it, but my dad liked it. I think it may have been a little too far ahead of its time, but, also, ABC expected it to compete with Dallas and Miami Vice. It had a cult following, but not enough of a following to compete with those two established hit shows, so ABC cancelled it before it finished its second season.

Even against those odds, in November 1987, Max Headroom was a very recognizable character. Even people who didn’t watch the TV show would have been familiar with Coca-Cola commercials that featured him. A rubber Max Headroom mask would have been easy to procure at that time as it would have been a reasonably popular Halloween costume. The pranksters may have bought it prior to Halloween, or even bought it on clearance afterward.

Who was behind the Max Headroom incidents?

Years and decades went by without a suspect ever being identified.

The FCC and FBI were able to pinpoint an area in Chicago that looked like the setting in the video, with line of sight to the Hancock Building and the Sears Tower. How and where they did it was pretty clear. But they never figured out who it was.

There are a couple of clues about the pirate’s age. He quoted a 1966 song from The Temptations when he sang “Your love is fading.” He also hummed the theme of Clutch Cargo, a crudely animated cartoon that ended in 1960, and quoted a line from the last episode of Clutch Cargo. Clutch Cargo survived in reruns for a few years into the 60s, but wasn’t rediscovered as a cult classic until the 1990s, so it’s possibly more familiar to millennials than to Gen X.

The humor was juvenile, so we tend to assume the prankster was a teenager. But the references to The Temptations and Clutch Cargo suggest he may have been older. Elder Gen X, possibly, but maybe even younger Boomer.

Why I can’t let go of the Max Headroom incident

I find the story fascinating for several reasons. First, I’m old enough to remember when it happened. I remember seeing coverage of the incident on the news. I knew what WGN was from watching baseball games on cable TV. Chicago was about 6 hours away, but close enough that I had been there.

Second, I am a classically trained journalist. I attended journalism school on a naive and idealistic premise that I could go into journalism and make the profession better. I have only dabbled in journalism since getting the degree, but I do know how to do investigative reporting.

Third, on my way out of journalism and into computers, I did a fair amount of work at a TV station, and I did this work in the late ’90s, before the transition to all digital had occurred.

Finally, much later in my career, I worked in government contracting. Because of the work I did at the time, various government agencies conducted investigations into my background to make sure I was someone they could trust not to go all Edward Snowden on them. The companies I was working for told me what to expect from the investigation. I was interviewed by government investigators myself, and neighbors and former neighbors who had feds knock on their door had some questions for me afterward.

Knowing how other federal agencies conduct investigations, and knowing how to conduct an investigation myself, I find it fascinating that the perpetrators got away with it.

Why the Max Headroom pranksters got away with it

If I were investigating it, I would have found out who all of the disgruntled station employees were. I would have talked to the HR departments of both stations. I would have also talked to other employees. And I simply would have followed the information they gave me to the end. I also would have talked to the union to find out if they knew of any disgruntled TV workers. The union may or may not have been cooperative, but the TV stations would have. For that matter, a TV station with a news department would have already started the work for me. There would be limits on what they could find out without a warrant. But a federal investigator with a warrant could much more quickly chase down those leads.

Where I think this broke down was a detail captured in VICE: The FCC didn’t have someone on the ground in Chicago who wanted to knock on doors and talk to people. I get that, being an extreme introvert, but when I was in journalism school, I found ways to make the phone calls and knock on doors.

With no one willing to knock on doors and talk to people, the case was doomed.

Narrowing it down

Even in a city the size of Chicago, there was a fairly limited population of people who would have the knowledge of TV broadcasting, access to equipment, and technical skills to pull off the stunt. There has been some speculation that it wasn’t an inside job, but rather an outsider, perhaps someone interested in hacking and phone phreaking, who was able to gain access to the necessary equipment either through school or by purchasing it at ham radio swap meets. If it was an outsider, the investigation would have taken longer. It would have required getting familiar with the Chicago-area ham radio and hacking/phreaking scenes. To do that, you need someone who doesn’t look like a Fed.

I don’t think it would have been that hard. I infiltrated the Chicago-area phreaking scene as a teenager in 1989 without even living in Chicago. Unfortunately, I never thought to ask about Max Headroom. I wish I had, but then I probably wouldn’t be able to talk about it.

To be really good at investigations, I think it helps to be a little bit of a gossip. The FCC guy in Chicago in 1987 doesn’t sound like he was the right guy.

Recent theories about the Max Headroom incident

Several theories emerged in recent years. One speculated that the pirate was a Chicago area punk rock musician who died in 2010, because he seemed to have a similar sense of humor and a similar sense of production value. But his bandmates have said repeatedly he wouldn’t have had the skills in 1987 to perform the stunt.

Another theory surfaced on Reddit that two brothers involved in the Chicago phreaking and hacking scene may have done it, also because one of the brothers seemed to have a similar sense of humor. But that also never really panned out. They weren’t terribly interested in talking about it, which is understandable, so that lead ran cold.

Another theory I have seen, but can’t find anymore because the thread seems to have been deleted, was that a Chicago-area technical school received a donation of television equipment and some students who had access to that equipment were the ones who carried out the prank. It’s a very interesting theory, but not being able to find it again, I don’t know if it was just speculation or if they had some details, such as the name of the school.

Invariably, when the incident comes up on social media, some commenter says they know someone and has seen proof, but offer no details and say the people who did it don’t want to be found.

Of course anyone can claim that, but the statute of limitations ran out in 1992. The government won’t come for them. It might potentially harm their prospects for employment, so that may be why they don’t want to be found. Some pranksters want the notoriety, but, having stayed in hiding more than 35 years, clearly these pranksters don’t.

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.