It happened almost 40 years ago. Someone jammed local television signals in Chicago, playing a short but bizarre skit—there are no other words to describe it—featuring two people, both faces covered, with one donning a Max Headroom mask.
This event occurred on November 22, 1987, at two Chicago stations. Two hours apart, intrusions occurred that evening, one at 9:14 PM and the other at 11:20 PM. They lasted 90 seconds, but it was a weird interruption. In one part, a woman’s voice is heard telling the Max Headroom character to bend over while smacking its backside with a flyswatter.
Unlike Captain Midnight, aka John MacDougall, who was busted for his 1986 signal interruption to protest HBO’s monthly rate of only $12.95/month, the Max Headroom signal busters were never apprehended. It remains one of broadcast history’s greatest mysteries (via WGN):
Nov 22, 1987: a person wearing a Max Headroom mask achieved broadcast signal intrusion on Chicago's WGN & WTTW channels. #80s Find out more about this fascinating incident here > https://t.co/DujCGbyGiW pic.twitter.com/ZC7i7YE5QL
— Old School 80s (@OldSchool80s) November 22, 2023
WGN sports anchor Dan Roan was getting into Bears highlights when all of a sudden, at 9:14 p.m., his studio monitor went black and so did televisions at home.
Then a masked man appeared on the screen making no noise and moving back and forth.
He was wearing the face of a fictitious 80s failing sitcom character named Max Headroom
It went on for 25 long and painful seconds until the engineers could switch the microwave path back to local programming.
“I looked over at the monitor and this image, I could tell it wasn’t a sports highlight,” Jon Walgren, former WGN floor director, said.
“We got a laugh out of it. We went home and woke up to the newspapers and it was a pretty big deal,” Roan said.
The hijack was on every local newscast and in every area newspaper. Even the Washington Post, USA Today and other national media was puzzled by the pirating that kicked not only WGN off the air, but WTTW as well.
WTTW’s incident took place two hours later on the very same night. While devoted “Dr. Who” fans sat and watched late night or slept and taped their favorite sci-fi show, the same masked man blurted a bunch of inaudible gibberish and got smacked with a flyswatter on his bare behind. The incident lasted closer to two minutes.
The WTTW version had some sound. And with great difficulty, under all the noise, you could hear the Max Headroom imposter mention the name of Chuck Swirsky— a WGN Radio guy who filled in for Roan on the sports desk from time to time.
The motive? Unknown. The suspects. Unknown. The crime: unsolved for now. I doubt the Max Headroom signal suspects will ever be apprehended. It’s been 36 years now. Whoever did this got away with one of the most bizarre moments in television history.
