November 3, 2021 • 54 mins
How did hackers take over a television signal in the late 1980s? Stuff You Should Know's Chuck Bryant joins the show to talk about the Max Headroom Incident.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Pay there and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
and I love all things tech. And so last week
we were planning on running a classic episode of about
(00:24):
the Max Headroom Incident, a famous incident in which a
person was able to overpower TV broadcast signals and insert
a pirate signal into a television channel. And UH, then
like it turned out that we had a bunch of
other stuff that needed to be published last week, so
(00:45):
it ended up going up briefly and then coming back down.
But now we're putting it up for real Z's and
we're doing it today on Wednesday, because the episode I'm
working on UH is taking a little more time than
I had anticipated because I have to pull a lot
of information from a lot of different sources. But I
never want to leave you without an episode, so we're
(01:07):
moving up the classic episode for Friday to today Wednesday.
This all makes sense somewhere, maybe not right now, but
I promise somewhere down the line it does. So right now,
let's go back and listen to this classic episode about
the Max headroom incident. Well, the nice thing is that, uh,
you know, I like to let my guests kind of
(01:31):
pick a topic if they if they prefer, I mean,
if they don't, If they want me to pick one,
I'm happy to. But I gave you that that option,
and you came back with one of my favorite stories period,
not just in tech just it's just one of those cool,
weird things that have happened. And I do not want
to steal thunder. All I wanna ask you is, Chuck,
(01:54):
if you were in Chicago on November twenty, nineteen seven
and you were watching h w g N at nine
pm because you want to check out the news and
it's coming up on the sports, which I know you're
a fan of the sports, what happened? Well, that could
(02:16):
have happened because I would have been sixteen at the time. Yeah,
you and I are in this age wheelhouse. Yeah, we
we actually were alive at this time, and we were
we would have been aware of at least the entity
that appeared instead of the sports scores. Um. But yeah,
something weird happened at that moment. There was an interruption
(02:37):
in normal service, Yeah, what they call a broadcast intrusion,
and Uh, like all classic broadcast intrusions, it started with
a little grainy, you know, static going on, and they're
always a little unsettling when you watch them, even if
they're goofy. Yeah, this is something kind of creepy about it.
You know, what's out of place, and something that, especially
when it's something as ritualistic, is the news. You know
(03:01):
that follows a very specific pattern, and when something goes
outside that pattern, you know, that upsets our little world
balance for a moment. So in this case, the there was,
like you said, there was this this disturbance in the force,
and a new picture popped up and replaced the sportscaster,
(03:23):
and it was a guy in a disturbing rubber mass
and that mask was of a specific eighties icon, which
I think a lot of people don't even know who
this is anymore, but Max Headroom. Yeah, if if you're
a child of the eighties, Max max hedrum loomed large
for a while, and I know when this intrusion came out,
(03:45):
this broadcast intrusion, it seemed like about half the people
even knew who he was trying to imitate, and then
the other half just had no idea. They thought it
was just some weirdo with the mask. Well, and part
of that was because, uh, the quality of the video
was not exactly super high quality. But on top of that, yeah,
(04:06):
it's kind of a niche thing, and he was Max
Hedroom was used as sort of a spokes thing, I guess,
a spokesman for a new coke Sure that that great
move by the Coca Cola company. Yeah, oh man, I
remember that well, I remember it with Paine. Yeah. So
living living in Atlanta, the whole Coca Cola New Coke
(04:29):
thing was it definitely strikes close to home. So yeah,
he um. He was a spokesman for that as well
as a kind of a fantasy character who appeared on
lots of other stuff. But generally speaking, if you don't
know who Max Hedroom is first, just go ahead and
do an image search because it'll pop right up. Yeah,
but it's a a character that was supposed to look
(04:50):
like a digital character, right. It was supposed to like
a computer generated image, and it was kind of a
guy with a long face and weird, kind of ridged hair.
He had always had a dynamic c g I background
behind him that looked like kind of just like Neon
stripes that were constantly twisting and turning in different ways,
(05:12):
and he would stutter, yeah, the digital stutter occasionally, and
uh would be very kind of snarky and sarcastic, and
ultimately got a television series as well, as you know,
two couple different television series, one of them which was
like a talk show, and one of which was more
of a like an actual fictional story like with an arc. Yeah,
(05:35):
that one was pretty good. Actually, the original British show,
even though it was a lot of American actors, was
was pretty cool and definitely ahead of its time as
far as you know. The whole idea was that this
uh roving reporter was I think Matt Frewer played him
as a real dude and as Max Headroom, but he
was digitally replaced with this character Max Headroom, and at
(05:56):
the time it just seemed really odd. But now when
you look back at it and watch it, it's like, man,
this show was kind of ahead of this. Yeah, it
was really imprescient. Yeah it was. It also revealed where
the name came from, where Matt Frewer's character, as I recall,
is waylaid and the last thing he sees before he
loses consciousness is a sign on a on a a
(06:17):
wall that tells what the Max Headroom for that wall
is pretty clad became the character's name. Yeah. So the
person who appeared on this video was wearing a MAX
Headroom mask and had this corrugated metal background sort of
emulated the digital look, wore the suit that Max Headroom
more like just a dark suit and tie, and um, yeah,
(06:40):
this thing was the metal background. It looked like like
a garage door. It was just sort of spinning in
the background. Yeah, it was. It was on some sort
of gimbal or something. That's what I figured. Yeah, because
you can tell it's swinging back and forth, so predictably
it can't be held by somebody. You had to be
on some sort of pivot or something, and but it's
moving backward and forward. So it kind of mimics that
(07:02):
that digital line twisting in the background. And except for
one part, there's a part where there's a clear cut
in the video. The video itself was about or at
least what we've seen is about a minute and twenty
two seconds. Yeah. Well, actually I don't think we differentiated.
There were two videos, two intrusions. The first one was
short and had no audio and was on w g N,
(07:25):
and then about two hours later they hijacked the PPS
affiliate and that's where the classic minute and a half,
nearly minute and a half with audio, really strange audio
comes through. That's right, because that first one, like you said,
I'm glad you pointed that out, it was silent. It
was the images from the and the image and the
audio from w g N was cut, but there was
(07:46):
no audio coming in other than that. I think there's
like a buzzing noise that came in through the first intrusion,
and you saw this this figure just sitting there and
kind of rocking back and forth like left and right, Yeah,
which is also a disconcerting Yeah, definitely like you felt
like something is really wrong at that moment. And when
(08:07):
it came back, the sportscaster said, you might be wondering
what just happened. I know, I am, uh something along
those lines. But yes, the second one, you had the
audio and it played for the what we what appeared
to be the length of the video. The first section
had uh, the guy just saying odd things and they
were all very Chicago specific well, and and sort of
(08:28):
slamming w g N because he'd slammed the Chuck swart
Sky Yeah as a freaking liberal. Yeah, he's a sportscaster
for w g N. Yeah. And uh he also talked
about the Greatest World Newspaper Nerds something like that. But
w g N stands for World's Greatest Newspaper. Yeah, So
(08:51):
it turned out that that little know, the great the
great World Newspaper Nerds or whatever however he worded it,
that was a reference back to w g N. So
it's very clearly intended for w g N. Yeah. And
the first attack wasn't as effective as as they had
hoped because, uh, like I said, there was no audio.
(09:11):
And also the folks at w g N, once they
figured out something was going on, very quickly changed the
frequency transmitters. So they said, well, just hit PBS, I guess. Yeah, Yeah,
which is interesting. We'll talk more about how that kind
of helps us know a little more about the attackers.
Because here's the other thing. To this day, there there's
(09:32):
no the public has no idea who did this. Yeah.
I think that's why this story has lingered. And it's
so cool is because anytime you have an unsolved mystery,
even if it's uh just sort of an odd broadcast
intrusion like this, people are going to be obsessed with it, like, um,
we've a lot of the information from that I did
research on. Came from a motherboard kind of the mother
(09:55):
of all articles, had some great research, Yeah, Chris Middle
that's yeah. The article, if you want to look for it,
is the Mystery of the Creepiest Television Hack. And I
agree this article is fantastic. It really lays out not
just the incident, but also other things that had happened
beforehand that kind of laid the groundwork for this, as
(10:16):
well as just a discussion, although a brief one, about
the hacker culture that existed at that time and how
that kind of lends itself to people who maybe are
cleverer than is good for them or could be very
nice way to say, yeah, because as it turns out,
the f c C here in the United States does
(10:38):
not take kindly to folks intruding upon established airways. No,
it's it's a big no no, especially with bare butts,
which I think you said. Once the camera cuts, we
didn't continue there. That's when it got really weird because
there's a camera cut and then you see the mask
is off, but the guy has his head out of
(10:59):
frame and it's just sort of holding the mask. Yeah
he is, pants are down showing his his bear Fannie,
and then yeah from profile and then a lady on
the right. Uh, and it looks like some sort of
Old West like Antiochlely type garb. Yeah, spanks him with
the fly swatter on his butt, although spanks is really
being generous. She's very slowly and lightly tapping him on
(11:21):
the bottom with the flyswater, so to the point where
you're you're thinking, like, I guess that's supposed to represent spanking. Uh,
doesn't look like any spanking I ever received as a kid.
I got you. Anyway, That's pretty much where the video
cut off, and then it went right back into Doctor Who,
and which is really funny to see the transition. Yeah, yeah,
he died of an electric shock. Yeah, you've got to
(11:43):
watch the whole incident on YouTube if you haven't already.
And in case you're curious that episode, it's we're talking
classic Doctor Who. Obviously back in seven, this is not
the reboot. It was the Horror of fang Rock. So
if that's your favorite episode, I'm sorry that was interrupted
back in nine seven. So yeah, and like we said,
the the audio really showed that that the public television
(12:06):
station wasn't the intended target. It was. It was a
target of opportunity after the first attempt failed. And uh,
and we'll talk more about the technology behind that and
why they had to switch from one to the other. Um,
it turns out it was largely a practical issue, at
least as far as I can determine. And it was.
(12:29):
There were also references within the little weird diet tribe.
The guy made to Coca Cola because he said catch
the waves and he had a new coat can that
he threw down on the ground. Yeah, And also a
reference to the cult cartoon Clutch Cargo. Yeah, he hummed
the theme Clutch Cargo. If you've ever seen the movie
Pulp Fiction, Um, the scene with young Bruce Willis back
(12:56):
in the nineteen seventies, I guess with Christopher Walkin as
his guardian, he's watching Clutch Cargo on TV. There that
with the mouth's cut out. O'Brien has also used that
same comedic effect using the live action in order because
what what the whole point was was it was an
idea of of reducing the cost of animation big time
(13:18):
because there was no animation. You had to picture, yeah,
still picture, and then you would superimpose live actors mouths
on top of it. And if that sounds creepy and
disturbing to you, you you're on the right track. It
was not the only cartoon to do this. There were
a few others. Um, thank you Cambria Productions for and
(13:39):
uh yeah, so he hummed like the whole Clutch Cargo
theme and made references to actual episodes of Clutch Cargo.
Uh so it was certainly someone with an odd sense
of humor who did this. Now, there was no other message, right,
there was no. It wasn't like a political thing. It
was very stream of consciousness, kind of weird. He holds
up I guess what we can cleanly describe as a
(14:01):
marital aid. Yes, at one point, and throws that on
the ground and um, it's just once the fly swatting
comes in, it's just obvious that they're kind of free forming.
Although it was not live, which is important to know.
This is at some video tape that they made. Yeah, yeah,
and it was because I mean, in order to do
a live intrusion would require essentially a studio and you'd
(14:23):
have to have some sort of link to a transmitter
that also had line of sight to the same antenna
as whatever target you were you're aiming at, So that
would have been an astoundingly complicated. This is definitely a
little easier to pull off. So you know, now that
we know that this, they've they've never been found. They're
(14:44):
likely never to be found. I mean, it's always possible
that someone could come forward and say, all right, well
here's how it actually happened. I'm the guy who did this.
Would I'm surprised that hasn't happened by now because the
statute of limitations is up for Yeah, it's way up,
so you can't get in trouble, and it's um I
think they would unless they just think it's better left
(15:04):
as a mystery. They would live in like especially nowadays
with the Internet like it is, it would blow up,
you know, it would be right. It could possibly be
the fact that I mean, you know, of course we're
just projecting here, but it could possibly be that they
are no longer terribly proud of what they did, and
or that they've moved on in their lives. Yeah, there's
(15:24):
a significant amount of time since then, and they might
have thought you know, I'm not going to brag about
something I did when I was younger and dumber, especially
now that I'm the CEO of ABC, right that that
might end up. By the way, we do not actually
mean that the CEO of ABC or Didney Disney affiliates
are involved. But the other interesting thing is that this
(15:46):
was not the first time that um I A an
intrusion had happened in in broadcast history. The first one,
if you want to go back, actually didn't happen in
the United States, happened back in UH the UK in
nineteen seventies seven, and that was when a hoaxer interrupted
(16:08):
a Southern television broadcast by UH inserting audio. It didn't
change the video, So this is kind of the opposite
of what had happened the first time with the Max
Headroom insteat. But it was an audio stream that came
in and carried a message from the alien villa on UH.
And this is in the like I said, in the UK,
(16:29):
so obviously the alien had an English accent. I guess
that's only you know, fair like, if you're going to
interrupt someone's program, you want to make sure you're speaking
in the dialect, right, Yeah, suddenly they spoke like, like like
with a French accent. I mean that would just be
(16:50):
but anyway, so it was a message that essentially said
that humans should prepare themselves for the worst, because you know,
destruction is a common Yeah, that's great. That's what a
broadcast intrusion should be, right, some creepy warning, not just
a random series of images that disturb you for things
that you can't quite put your finger on, although that
is more disturbing. Almost. Yeah, then six we get the
(17:11):
first one in the United States. Uh, and this was
an inside job deal. This was happened on April at
twelve thirty two am, and it involved the East Coast
feed of HBO. And uh, what happened was the HBO
was showing a movie called The Falcon and the Snowman Classic.
You know, it certainly could not be helped by approximately
(17:35):
four minutes of footage missing because they've been replaced by
a series of colored bars that say good evening, HBO
from Captain Midnight twelve a month no way showtime movie
channel Beware. Yeah, that had a clear motive. Yeah, and
and and actually ironically, the um the guy was caught.
His name was John R. McDougall, and he was an
(17:56):
employee of Central Florida Teleport and he used what do
you use? He the was it the text that he used?
He yeah, so the text generators that the companies used
in order to put an overlay on top of a screen.
So like like the actual words that were being used there, Well,
they're very particular, and by measuring things like the height
(18:18):
of the the font, the how far uh the middle
bar of an e is according to the other side,
how close together those words are, investigators were able to
narrow it down to a specific machine. Yeah, it's pretty there. Yeah, yeah,
this is like incredible forensics, right. It's sort of like
(18:38):
if someone gets hold of a typewritten sheet of paper
and is able to determine the model of typewriter that
was used to actually make this. But in this case
it got even more specific because these machines aren't everywhere,
and that's what led them to track down McDougall, who, uh,
who have just decided that the recent hike in prices
(18:59):
for a monthly subscription to HBO were unconscionable and he
had to make it known. So, yeah, he had a
side job selling satellite dish service yeah, so he thought
that would nick his business some. And so he eventually
was caught and pled guilty, paid a five thousand dollar fine,
and served just one year probation. And it was that
(19:20):
incident that led I believe, Congress to make it a
federal violation to abroad. Yeah, it was a felony all
of a sudden. Yeah, because they suddenly said, wait, now
that people can actually do this. Now great, this was someone,
like we said, an inside job. They had access to,
uh a satellite. What what he actually did was he
pointed the satellite of Central Florida Teleport at the HBO satellite. Chuck,
(19:48):
You and I we wouldn't even know where the heck
that satellite is. Yeah, so even if we had the
equipment and everything else, we'd just beat Well, the sky
is a lot bigger than I had taken into account,
and uh you know, of course we'd have to be
someplace where we could actually get a good clear view
of the sky because if they're building in the way
or something. But uh yeah, so he he was a
(20:11):
good example of that. And then September n so this
is just before the the incident with the Max Headgroom incident,
Thomas Haney hijacked a signal at on the Playboy channel.
I think I remember hearing about this one. Yeah, it
was one where it was sending in religious messages essentially
saying repent and and you know you are, uh, discard
(20:33):
your wicked ways, that kind of thing, right, And it's
no surprise because he actually worked for the Christian Broadcast Network. Yeah,
so again he had a job. Yeah, he had access
to the equipment necessary and the knowledge necessary to be
able to do this. It's not something that the average
person would be able to do. And again it was
the character generator, the the font generator that kind of
(20:55):
led the way. It was the main piece of evidence
that was leveled against him. Um. I remember that Pat
Robertson was very upset when the verdict was handled handed down.
He said that there wasn't enough evidence to um to
say that Haney was in fact the person who who
did this. Well, he was convicted, but um, I think
just got probation. And the first guy, McDougald, is interesting.
(21:17):
What he got convicted for was operating without a license
even though he had a license. So that was a
bit of a hinky ruling. I think they just had
to convict him of something, because I don't know if
the law was in place at that point. Yeah, yeah,
I mean it's it's kind of like that deal where
you realize, this is someone that we need to punish,
but we don't have a law that covers the crime.
(21:37):
We haven't defined it as a crime, but we know
that this is something people really shouldn't be able to do,
so we have to somehow justify it. Um. Yeah. And
as it turns out, the every nation, uh, in some
way or another, ends up regulating the electromagnetic spectrum, but
it changes from one place to the other. Sure, there's
(21:57):
only so much room, right, yeah, exactly. So electromagnetic spectrum
goes all the way from radio waves, which can a
radio wave can be kilometers long, right, and then you
go all the way to the other side to like
gamma rays we're talking about on the nanoscale and everything
in between. That's the electromagnetic spectrum. Visible light is part
of that. You know, visible light is on the short side,
(22:20):
but radio waves and microwaves are on the longer side.
And uh not all those radio waves. You know, we
can't just all use the same ones because then we
would have interference, right if if the television and your
phone used the same frequencies, then you would have interference
between the two and that would be terrible. Nothing would
be usable. Yeah, don't call it a crunch if there's
(22:42):
too much activity on one frequency. Yeah, that's that's if
you've got everyone just using you know what they're supposed to.
Let's say everyone in the cellular network has they're all
on their phones. That we've seen this happen in the
life events the post couldn't. Yeah, or even just going
to a big event like any like c e S
(23:03):
or any large event like that, you suddenly can't get
access to anything. That's where you've got more demand for
data transmission than there is capacity. Yeah, I've tried to
get a signal at Comic Con before and it's no. No,
same thing is true a Dragon Con and that's a
like a third the size of Comic Con. But yeah,
it's It's also true that there are wavelengths within the
(23:25):
electromagnetic spectrum that are really good for carrying data and
some that aren't. So the government has divided up the
electromanetic spectrum and saying these are the sections that can
be used for specific purposes. So a large part of
it is set aside for government and military use a
large part of his side for UH radio SO AM
(23:46):
and FM UH. And then you also have television broadcast
that are that are partial partitioned off as well cellular
data WiFi. All of these things have their specific place
that is mandated by the government. Yeah, we'll be back
with more about the Max Hedgroom incident in just a moment.
(24:13):
So if you go in and start messing around with that,
the government gets breaking up set. Yeah, because I think
you know, it's sort of a Nippot in the bud situation,
like one broadcast intrusion, really no big deal. And that
apparently is why the lead investigator said that um, I
think his name was Marcus. He had a hard time
getting resources because there was a little egg on the
(24:35):
face and they probably just wanted it to go away
more than anything. And no one's really hurt. There was
no damage done, so they're not gonna throw a lot
of money in time trying to find this person. And
and he also had some fairly harsh words for an
fcc UH investigator. He was actually in Chicago. He didn't
name the person and he's still salty about it though. Yeah,
(24:57):
I said that said that this guy wasn't willing to
go and not con doors to actually do some investigation,
and part of that is probably because there was this
embarrassment factor. They're also but without the teeth, you know,
with the authority, it makes it hard for someone to
go out and say there's a justification for spending the time,
resources and money necessarily for a small fine in probation,
(25:20):
even if they do catch the person. Now the maximum fine,
although I doubt that we would see a maximum fine
for something as small as a men and a half
interruption in Doctor Who Doctor Who fans, please don't take
me to task for that. But the maximum fine is
a hundred thousand dollars or a year in jail or both. Yeah,
which they were very big on announcing at the time
(25:42):
as well as UM. I think they had a lot
of misinformation they or I don't know if it's misinformation
or they were trying to get out a little misinformation
saying how sophisticated of an operation it was and how
expensive all the equipment must have been, which is really
not the case now. I think I think it was
a lot of people trying to discourage future pranksters from
(26:03):
following in their footsteps. So that means, well, let's make
sure we we set the the bar very high, saying
it's really hard to do and it's really expensive. Yeah,
and if you do try, it's gonna get even more
expensive for you, because we're gonna find you a hundred
thousand dollars. So now, the truth was that the transmission
equipment that was that could be used to do such
(26:25):
a thing, while brand new, would cost maybe you know,
a few thousand dollars, which is a significant amount of
money once it hits the aftermarket. Like you know, let's
say that you've got a a station, a small station
that is upgrading its equipment and it gets rid of
the old stuff that was on the amateur market. So
you could go out and buy that stuff and it
(26:45):
would be much less expensive than if you were to
buy it brand new. So I mentioned earlier in this
episode about the the hacker culture, Well have you heard
about freakers? Okay, so a freak or spelled p R
E A K I n G. I like it already freaking.
It's all about manipulating the phone system. So Steve Jobs
(27:09):
and Steve Wozniac were freakers, founders of Apple, actually Wasniac
was really the guy who knew how to do it,
but there were a ton of them. One of the
most famous ones his name was Captain Crunch, and Captain
Crunch was called that because he discovered that by using
a Captain Crunch plastic whistle then came in a box
of cereal, he could mimic the tone that the telephone
(27:31):
company was using and allow him to make free long
distance phone calls. So you had this culture of people who, wait,
what's a long distance phone call? Yeah, okay, kids, Once
upon a time, if you wanted to call anyone outside
of your area code, it cost extra. Lady actually tell
me that the other day that was cutting my hair.
(27:51):
She got a phone call. She said, I'm sorry, it's
my daughter long distance. I need to step away. And
I was sitting there, going, what's long distance? Maybe intern national?
That might be it? That's about it, or you could
just keep cutting my hair, right? Yeah, yeah, you know,
it's fine. I mean, I'm not gonna know her half
a conversation, but yeah, the the uh. These were people
(28:12):
who thought that these huge systems were fascinating, that the
telephone system was really interesting, and learning how it worked
was fascinating, and then once you know how it works,
you know how to kind of game the system. Yeah,
and it's not necessarily the case that they were looking
to cause trouble or to be pranksters. Although there was
some mischief involved there too, a lot of it was
(28:33):
more about, oh, now I know how this works, and
that means this works this other way. It was really
more about learning the system and then negotiating it kind
of like, yes, very much like a little mischief, a
little civil disobedience. But I don't think most of these
people early on, we're trying to cause harm. No, it
was really more of insatiable curiosity. Really, I can so
(28:55):
let me just try it out and see if it works.
I think that's exactly what happened with this, Max Head.
I totally agree. You had people who said, let's you know,
we know how radio works. Television broadcast is essentially a
radio broadcast. So once you know how that works, and
once you know that the basics behind it, are there
ways where we could end up injecting our own signal
into this and have a little fun and have a
(29:17):
little fun exactly. And so it was one of those
things where you had the people who had to know how,
and yet the people who had the willingness to do it,
and they were working together to create this prank and
uh again aiming at a very specific target and when
that didn't work, switching to doctor Who, Yeah, I appreciate
the attitude of most of this stuff too. To be honest, Um,
I don't think there's being wrong with a little hi
(29:40):
jinks to thumb your nose at the man if you're
not hurting anybody. Um, I mean, you don't want to
see it all the time because then it takes out
all the teeth out of it. But every now and then,
I kind of like, you know, when they interviewed people
in Chicago, some people on the street were really upset
and some people just kind of laughed. I was like,
I think it's pretty great. Yeah. Yeah, because again, like
like we were saying, there wasn't any lasting harm or right,
(30:00):
and of course not the actual intrusion didn't cause any damage.
It wasn't it wasn't something that was going to wreck
physical equipment. No, you lost eighty seconds of doctor Who, Yeah,
which some might say is some people say it's priceless. Uh,
you know, this is Tom Baker, doctor Who we're talking about, well,
especially back then when you just couldn't go look up
you know the scene that I missed the night before,
(30:21):
like that was a true intrusion. Yeah, yeah, I mean
this is this is obviously pre well. I mean, the
Internet was around, but nobody was on it except for
its boards and stuff that was That was pretty much
what most hackers had access to unless they were in
a university and they had some access to the preliminary
version of the Internet. Um, but there was no worldwide Web.
(30:42):
There was no web. There wouldn't be another. There wouldn't
be a worldwide Web for another five years. So there
was no way of being able to go on and
and check something you missed, Nor was there a way
for you to really easily communicate with folks all over
the world. Now they could do it with local Bolton
board system And in fact, that's what we suspect, or
(31:03):
at least there there's a lot of suspicion that, in fact,
one of the local Chicago bbs is had people in
a forum who were at least tangentially involved in this,
if not directly responsible. But to really understand what was
going on, it helps to understand how a broadcast. Television
(31:23):
broadcast actually works. So here we go. We're gonna going
back to the analog days of TV broadcast technology. So now, Chuck,
you've you've been in a television studio too, right, Yeah,
you and you and Josh I'm sure have done some
of this. I've done some of this. When you see
how a TV studio works, it's actually very eye opening.
(31:45):
I mean to me, it completely pulled away a lot
of misconceptions that I had had. For example, you think
of like cameraman, but in large part camera operation is
done remotely, not behind a camera. Right. Uh. These cameras
that you see in the studio are enormous and they're heavy.
(32:06):
And this is also the reason why I'm explaining this
is also to to illustrate why doing this live would
have been impractical. Yea, these television cameras are the reason
why they're so big and heavy is in part so
that they're incredibly smooth and steady and they aren't going
to jitter. If you know, you could drop something right
(32:29):
next to one, it's not going to move at all. Yeah,
it's the same reason a camera Dolly ways, you know,
a thousand pounds. Yeah, yeah, it's in order to get
that that stability that you want, so that you have
thousand pounds. By the way, they're less than that, but
they're super heavy for that reason, right, you want that
stability and that smoothness. Uh. And also, television camera doesn't
pick up sound. It doesn't have a microphone on it.
(32:51):
It's all about just capturing the image. Yeah, the mic
the sound is captured separately and together. They explain the magic. Yeah.
So the photons, that's the particles of light that are
coming from a scene and are being captured by a camera.
The light passes through a lens, which goes through a prism.
The prism is the purpose of a prism is to
(33:13):
break up light into its component parts. And this case,
we're talking about a prism that breaks light into red, green,
and blue. That's all you needed. And each of those
streams goes and is hit by or it hits a
c c D a charge couple device. Now a charge
couple device. What does is when photons hit it, it it
(33:33):
generates a stream of electricity that essentially reflects the nature
of the photons that hit it. So you've got these
three streams coming out the red, green, and blue. Uh.
They then go into an encoder. Meanwhile, the sound that
you're creating is also going to head back over towards
the master control room. The information from the encoder goes
(33:55):
to the master control room, it gets mixed together. So
you then have a saynal that has both video and sound.
Now there, if you were to be able to visualize this, uh,
it would actually be like the the visual data would
make up most of the a range of frequencies like
four within four mega hurts, and then the very edge
(34:20):
of it, like on the far right side, that would
represent the sound. So it's just a little sliver that's
the sound. Yeah, and you're either preparing to broadcast this
out to the masses live or you're just putting it
to tape to do so later. Yeah, these days we
put on a sea or both. Yeah, exactly if you
wanted to to to keep it forever. Now, you may
have heard that there were times where people were broadcasting
(34:43):
stuff and never recording it. So there there are things
that have been created for television that we will never
see again. It's kind of like in some ways going
to see a live stage show. If you were there,
you saw it and weren't that's it. But uh, in
this case, where talking about a live newscast, So that's
being broadcast out from that point. When it's all been encoded,
(35:06):
and you've got this video signal that has all the information.
It's got the red, the green, the blue, and the
audio all four things that you need, Yeah, it's time
to transmit that out and it goes from the studio
to a transmitter. It's called a studio transmitter link. Now,
most studios don't have an enormous antenna that's at a
(35:28):
really high elevation in broadcast to the general area. Cities
share them. Yeah, and we're talking about an era of
over the air television, right, You're using your antenna to
pick up wavelengths. So what what they would do is
they would use the studio transmitter link to beam this
information to a nearby antenna on a very tall building. Yeah.
(35:51):
Usually the tallest buildings in your city will have these,
and Chicago has a lot of tall building, yes, and
they use them for that purpose exactly. So if you
stream that out to the antenna, the antenna then ends
up broadcasting an electro magnetic signal and that ends up
being picked up by the antenna of your television, which
(36:12):
the electromagnetic signal when it hits the antenna generates an
electrical current. A tuner in your television is able to
focus in on a specific channel and thus kind of
filter the signal from the noise, and then it ends
up pulling out that video stream creating the red, green, blue,
and the audio, and you get your TV that you
get to watch. It's beautiful. It's I joked with you
(36:37):
earlier that we should just give them the explanation from
Willy Wonka, which is slightly more simplistic but but easier
to explain. But unfortunately it's not quite that easy. So
knowing how this works, where you've got the signal coming
from the studio being transmitted out to a giant antenna
and then broadcast to an area, there are several areas
(37:01):
that could be potentially vulnerable to intrusion. If you are
working on the inside, then if you're able to intercept
and put in a new signal to go to the
studio transmitter link to go out, then you're done. That's
all you need to do. You need just very easy
to do and very easy to trace back exactly. Yeah,
inside job, you're like, well, let's look at the people
(37:23):
who have access, because now that's all that could have
done this, But as it turns out, with a over
the air analog transmission, there was an easier way of
doing this where you didn't have to break into the
studio to do it. It was pretty great, actually. Yeah,
So all you have to do, and I say all
you have to do this still is pretty significant, is
(37:44):
you have to have a transmitter of your own. You
have to be able to have a direct line of
sight to the antenna that's going to pick up the
transmission from the studio, and you have to transmit on
the frequency that the studio uses at a higher intensity
than what the studio is doing. And then the antenna,
which is stupid. Yeah, it can't differentiate all of noses.
(38:06):
That's a bad signal. I don't want to broadcast. They
don't know that if it's the right frequency, it's going
to broadcast it. So when you hit the antenna, it's
gonna go for the strongest signal. I mean, this makes
sense because if you had two signals that were the
same frequency and one is stronger than the other, chances
are the other frequency is coming from a different source
further away, and that's not the one you want to transmit. Yes,
(38:29):
so literally all they needed. I mean, they didn't need
to to blow it out of the water, They just
needed to be stronger and to do so. Do you
just need to be a little closer. Yeah, it may
be a lot closer in this case, but but yeah, exactly,
they just had to be somewhere along the pathway from
the studio to the antenna that was being used. Uh,
they and they just had to transmit on the right frequency,
(38:51):
which was that was information they could get. They could
get the information on what frequency to use. So you've
got your transmitter, you've got your media, which in this
case was a tape that they had shot earlier that
wasn't lying. You're probably on a building, and they've got
to be somewhere pretty high up. So yeah, likely on
top of a building or at least on like a
balcony or fire escape or something where they can have
(39:11):
a line of sight. Uh, they are. They've got their
transmitter and geared up to the right amount of power,
they shoot it off and everything else is taken care
of for them. They don't try to do anything else.
In this case, the John Hancock building in the Sears
Tower with the two towers that had these two receivers.
And there's been a lot of theories over the years. Um,
most people believe they were probably high up, but I
(39:33):
have seen one theory that they were mobile in a van.
Not necessarily high up, but just super super close they Yeah,
that would also require them to have some way of
maintaining that line of sight and that that steady transmission,
because you know, if you if you don't, if you
don't have your electromagnetic waves directed right at the receiver,
(39:57):
then it's point it's not going to be a strong
enough sick. Yeah, I don't. I don't buy the van theory.
It would be really really challenging powering everything. It's to
be a pretty more sophisticated. It does make me suddenly
think that the Scooby Gang was responsible for it, because
you've got the big rubber mask like old man Withers.
We have a bit more to say about the Max
(40:17):
Headroom incident, but before we get to that, let's take
this quick break. So Channel nine, which was w g
N in Chicago. Uh, if you look at the channels
in the United States, they actually have the designated frequencies
they have to you know, use at least the range
(40:40):
that's around a D eight seven mega hurts. So you
tune your transmitter to that signal and you aim it
at the you know where the antenna is. You've identified that,
you've got it all lined up, and you're good to go. Well,
once w g N changed their frequency, that meant that
it didn't matter how much power they poured into the transit.
It's like you're speaking the wrong language. So that meant
(41:04):
that suddenly their their prank didn't really go anywhere. They
had a brief appearance with no audio. Yeah, so they
probably did something a little wrong on their end, on
their well, probably wasn't a test run. They probably wanted
it to work right, right right, But then unfortunately for them,
unfortunately for them, it didn't work with you know, without
a hitch. So they then say, well, what can we do?
(41:26):
How can we um save this and maybe get the
actual video that we shot scene and great, Yeah, if
you guys haven't watched this video, you really kind of
need to. But at any rate, so they then decided
to do their backup plan. They knew the frequency that
(41:46):
the local public broadcast channel was using, and they knew
that that antenna was on top of the sears tower
and that they could aim at that one. And uh so,
whether or not they had to relocate, they they probably
did it just to get a good line of sight
on the on the antenna. But uh it was only
(42:06):
a two hour time difference between the first attack and
the second attack, so to retune the transmitter, to prep
it to get ready to hit the target, and to
make sure you have a line of sight on it,
they probably stayed in the same general area, which is
northwest part of Chicago. Northwest. Yeah, there's actually that that
(42:27):
article we were talking about, the Motherboard article. They have
a great picture that shows the location of both studios
and both antenna and it kind of shows you like
an area where where the two lines almost crossed, and
you figure, I bet, I bet they were somewhere in
this general area so that they could if they didn't
have to relocate. Uh then they just you know, shifted position,
(42:52):
or maybe they relocated by a couple of blocks. Um,
which raises the question how they get access to a
high enough area and still have power and all that
kind of stuff. Right now, they were just on their
buddies the roof of his apartment with an extension quarter.
That's probably what happened. Uh. So they then did the
second attack at eleven o'clock or eleven fourteen, and that
(43:15):
one worked much better. Um. And like we said, the
material they had, the equipment they had was readily available,
wasn't It wasn't as rare as you would think it
would be. No. Dr Marcus, the lead investigator, said that, uh,
like a direct TV size intent of these days, it
is about all you would have needed. It's not like
one of those like school bus size stillite used to
(43:37):
see in backyards back in the day. It's pretty incredible. Uh,
the how little you would need in order to do it.
So fascinating attack, fascinating fact that it they were able
to do it without being caught. Um. And the fact
that you know, there weren't a whole lot of broadcast
intrusions after this point. You heard about maybe one or
(44:00):
to the Disney Channel has infamously been the attack the
side of an attack on multiple occasions. Yeah. I think
the Super Bowl was hijacked briefly a few years ago
in one city only though. Yeah. Yeah, Uh, it's it's
harder and harder to do now because you've got things
like digital encoding. Yeah, that make it much much more
(44:22):
difficult for the average hacker to do. I'm surprised it
didn't happen more often back in those days, with those
early I think there's sort of the wild West. It
may very well have been that the scare tactics the
FCC used. We have totally worried, Like people said like, well,
I know I can do this, but I'm totally not
gonna do this. Um, and you know, we we talked
a little bit. Uh. There are some theories out there
(44:45):
about who it could have been responsible for this. My
favorite was the the one that is probably the easiest
to dismiss, which was Eric Fournier, who was a punk
rock musician as well as an avant garde artist who
created a series of videos. Um. It's funny because the
Motherboard article refers to it as a YouTube channel, but
(45:07):
in fact the videos predate YouTube. Oh yeah, I guess
it is now on a YouTube channel. But they were
called shay h s h A y E St John
Sha st John. And if you look at these, you
you've forced me to earlier. They do have similar quality, um,
very a similar feel, almost absurd, surreal, disturbing. Doesn't necessarily
(45:28):
make much sense. You know, I think of it like
you you've seen the horror movies where they all um
center around like a creepy looking doll. Right, that's a
that's a genre unto itself. There's a brand new one,
right about a doll ab Yeah. Yeah, so that's the
fact that I responded so quickly with that is not
(45:49):
good for me. But yeah, it's this idea of things
that look not quite right. And the st John videos
are all about that, and they involve the looping of
certain phrases over and over again, experiments and lighting experiments
in uh camera angles, as well as digital effects or
(46:12):
maybe not even digital effects but special effects. The earlier
ones are actually more trippy the ones that are on
the YouTube channel itself. Um, so you can see that
the there's some shared uh aesthetics. Yeah, and he lived
in Indiana, apparently just a few hours from Chicago. Um.
(46:32):
He passed away in two thousand tens, so we'll never know.
I read one article that said that he admitted to
his friends that it was him, but I couldn't find
anything else to substantiate that. And the Motherboard article goes
so far as to suggest that that it's not him.
It's not him, because his friends all said he at
that time in ven he had no knowledge of video editing.
(46:54):
All the video stuff he did was later on. It
was in the late nineties, early two thousand's, so it
would make sense that, um, while it's the same sort
of kind of humor, it's not the same person. Yeah.
His old bandmate even said, you know, Eric didn't do this,
but he would have loved it. Yeah, he would have
thought it was really funny. Yeah. Yeah, And there's another
(47:17):
theory that Ice per sal and read it. That's how
I saw the link to motherboard, and you sent me
the link and I saw it and read it as well. Yeah,
this one holds some water to me. Unless this guy
Bowie j is that Pogue poagg one of the two,
unless he is just making all this stuff up. This
(47:40):
otherwise this sounds like a pretty decent lead. Yeah, I've
heard I've heard some people suggest that that perhaps the
guy himself is the one who did it, and he's
invented these personas to be the way of him explaining
how it was done without actually admitting that he did it.
But he he maintains his innocence. He says, no, I
really all of the evidence I have is early circumstantial.
(48:01):
I was thirteen when this happened, which to me suggests
that it's not him. Right, It does not seem like
a thirteen year old. No, there's no way. The voice
in the video is distorted, but it does. It definitely
seems like it's someone who's older than that. Um. But
he talks about uh, two brothers and one brother he said,
he described him as seeming to be on the autism spectrum,
(48:24):
and that he had a very keen interest in broadcast
spectrum and broadcast technology, but didn't have very many social skills. Yeah,
he was the poag. Yeah, he was very big as
a thirteen year old on that in that hacker scene.
But trying it sounded like really like one of the
young ones trying to ingratiate himself into the group, into
(48:47):
the group. These were a little older guys who were
more experienced. Um. He calls them J and K, which
are not their names, to provide their you know, to
guard their anonymity. And he said that Ja, who was
supposedly the autistic one, is Um. He's the one who
says that was the guy in the mask. They had
the same build. He references his brother in the video. Yeah,
(49:07):
he says that because he he shows a glove and
he says, uh, this one is dirty. My brother is
wearing the other one. Yeah, he apparently, he says, this
is from his reddit. He said, Uh, he liked to
tell dirty jokes. The dirty jokes were funny, at least
to me. Is a thirteen year old and a woman
dressed up as Antioakley swatting someone's bare butt with a
fly swatter is a perfect reflection of his sense of humor. Uh.
(49:31):
It was usually childish and sexually deviant. Yea. And he
talked about how he had kind of a verbal tick
that instead of saying uh, when he was trying to
think of something, he'd say oh yeah, and that if
you listen to the video, there's some there's a yeah,
there's a lot of him kind of making oh noises
between when he's saying things. Yeah. So it does kind
(49:54):
of come across as someone who's trying to think of
the next thing to say, Like, it didn't feel like
it's He does not feel that the Max Headroom incident
was terribly scripted, Like I think it was a lot
off the cuffman. Yeah. So the the other brother, Kay
was Jay's caretaker uh and also was possibly. The theory
(50:17):
seems to be that Kay was the one working the camera,
that Ja was the one on camera, and that Kay's
girlfriend was the one with the fly swatter, and again
all of this ends up being circumstantial evidence. He said that,
as uh Pogue said, as a thirteen year old, he
went to this apartment that was just filled with equipment.
(50:39):
He says that there was nothing, you know, no normal
decorations except like a rainbow kite or something in there.
Everything else was electronic equipment and that they were the
people they were talking about something but not explicitly talking about,
just saying that something big was gonna happen and that
he should definitely make sure to be watching channel nine
(51:00):
at nine pm, uh like w g N at nine pm,
so he could see the big thing that was going
to happen, and that he claims he didn't even put
two and two together, ye like, he saw the incident
go down and knew that something big was going to happen,
which does seem a little hinky to me, but he
says years later, as when it all kind of connected
for me, it seems a little weird. That does seem
(51:21):
a little weird to me too, but he said. He
does go on to defend himself a bit and say,
you know that there were I heard a dozen things
from them a day that we're just sort of weird
and out there, and it wouldn't register as anything big
to me. With they said, you know, we're gonna do
something big watch the TV tonight. So in other words,
they were a bunch of big talkers, but not Yeah,
(51:42):
this is a kid. He's trying to fit in. He
you know, it sounds like he was kind of nervous
hanging around this crowd, eager to please. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Well,
at any rate, he's the one who on Reddit just
laid out the situation and explained what he thought had
happened based upon circumstantial evidence. Again, he never witnessed any
of the us himself, according to his account, and it
(52:02):
kind of blew up on Reddit, didn't it? I did?
It did? And he gave specific updates and in fact,
he was interviewed heavily for the Motherboard article. Yeah, and
he explained that he tried to get in touch with
j and k Um through multiple media, like he knows
where they are still. Yep, he sent them Facebook messages,
he sent an email, and he sent them actual snail mail,
(52:24):
right and didn't get any response. And he says, I'm
taking that as a indication that they don't want to
talk about this, and so out of respect for their privacy,
I'm dropping it. Yeah, And so he never revealed the
identities of the people. Now, he did have other people
on the reddit the said they were around that same
scene back then, and it sort of checks out. The
(52:45):
guy had a similar ability short of shortened squatty and um,
so he had a little bit of support. But it's
all circumstantial and conjecture. You know, there's obviously no proof,
no smoking gun, right, so we may never know for
sure who did this. We'll have someone will have to
them forward. That's the only way. Yeah. But it's one
of those mysteries that is really interesting to read about too.
(53:06):
And the fact that it it's still you know, you
can you can watch the video, you can actually see
what happened. It's kind of cool because there are a
lot of these these weird moments you just have second
or third hand accounts and you can't you can't really
experience it for yourself. You have to think, oh, what
would it have been like, But now you can actually see. Yeah,
it's a pretty neat little time capsule experience, especially if
(53:27):
you grew up in the eighties, right, And if you
don't know who Max Headroom is, then maybe you should
do some research on that first and then watch the
video to understand how weird this was. That b B show.
I'm telling you it's pretty good. People should watch that. Yeah, totally, Well, Chuck,
I have to thank you for coming on the show
and for suggesting this. This was a ton of fun too.
I love on stuff. You should know doing our more
(53:48):
history centric ones, and this this is totally a history
podcast when you think about it. For history episode. Yeah. Absolutely.
I hope you enjoyed that classic episode of tech Stuff
published several years ago. Now, I should probably do another
episode about incidents in which people were able to overpower
television or radio signals and create pirate stations and that
(54:11):
sort of stuff. I think that would be a fun
episode to do, so I'm thinking about doing that in
the near future. If you have suggestions for topics I
should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, let me
know on Twitter. The handle we use there is tech
Stuff hsw and I'll talk to again really soon. Tech
(54:35):
Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more podcasts
from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Pay there and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
and I love all things tech. And so last week
we were planning on running a classic episode of about
(00:24):
the Max Headroom Incident, a famous incident in which a
person was able to overpower TV broadcast signals and insert
a pirate signal into a television channel. And UH, then
like it turned out that we had a bunch of
other stuff that needed to be published last week, so
(00:45):
it ended up going up briefly and then coming back down.
But now we're putting it up for real Z's and
we're doing it today on Wednesday, because the episode I'm
working on UH is taking a little more time than
I had anticipated because I have to pull a lot
of information from a lot of different sources. But I
never want to leave you without an episode, so we're
(01:07):
moving up the classic episode for Friday to today Wednesday.
This all makes sense somewhere, maybe not right now, but
I promise somewhere down the line it does. So right now,
let's go back and listen to this classic episode about
the Max headroom incident. Well, the nice thing is that, uh,
you know, I like to let my guests kind of
(01:31):
pick a topic if they if they prefer, I mean,
if they don't, If they want me to pick one,
I'm happy to. But I gave you that that option,
and you came back with one of my favorite stories period,
not just in tech just it's just one of those cool,
weird things that have happened. And I do not want
to steal thunder. All I wanna ask you is, Chuck,
(01:54):
if you were in Chicago on November twenty, nineteen seven
and you were watching h w g N at nine
pm because you want to check out the news and
it's coming up on the sports, which I know you're
a fan of the sports, what happened? Well, that could
(02:16):
have happened because I would have been sixteen at the time. Yeah,
you and I are in this age wheelhouse. Yeah, we
we actually were alive at this time, and we were
we would have been aware of at least the entity
that appeared instead of the sports scores. Um. But yeah,
something weird happened at that moment. There was an interruption
(02:37):
in normal service, Yeah, what they call a broadcast intrusion,
and Uh, like all classic broadcast intrusions, it started with
a little grainy, you know, static going on, and they're
always a little unsettling when you watch them, even if
they're goofy. Yeah, this is something kind of creepy about it.
You know, what's out of place, and something that, especially
when it's something as ritualistic, is the news. You know
(03:01):
that follows a very specific pattern, and when something goes
outside that pattern, you know, that upsets our little world
balance for a moment. So in this case, the there was,
like you said, there was this this disturbance in the force,
and a new picture popped up and replaced the sportscaster,
(03:23):
and it was a guy in a disturbing rubber mass
and that mask was of a specific eighties icon, which
I think a lot of people don't even know who
this is anymore, but Max Headroom. Yeah, if if you're
a child of the eighties, Max max hedrum loomed large
for a while, and I know when this intrusion came out,
(03:45):
this broadcast intrusion, it seemed like about half the people
even knew who he was trying to imitate, and then
the other half just had no idea. They thought it
was just some weirdo with the mask. Well, and part
of that was because, uh, the quality of the video
was not exactly super high quality. But on top of that, yeah,
(04:06):
it's kind of a niche thing, and he was Max
Hedroom was used as sort of a spokes thing, I guess,
a spokesman for a new coke Sure that that great
move by the Coca Cola company. Yeah, oh man, I
remember that well, I remember it with Paine. Yeah. So
living living in Atlanta, the whole Coca Cola New Coke
(04:29):
thing was it definitely strikes close to home. So yeah,
he um. He was a spokesman for that as well
as a kind of a fantasy character who appeared on
lots of other stuff. But generally speaking, if you don't
know who Max Hedroom is first, just go ahead and
do an image search because it'll pop right up. Yeah,
but it's a a character that was supposed to look
(04:50):
like a digital character, right. It was supposed to like
a computer generated image, and it was kind of a
guy with a long face and weird, kind of ridged hair.
He had always had a dynamic c g I background
behind him that looked like kind of just like Neon
stripes that were constantly twisting and turning in different ways,
(05:12):
and he would stutter, yeah, the digital stutter occasionally, and
uh would be very kind of snarky and sarcastic, and
ultimately got a television series as well, as you know,
two couple different television series, one of them which was
like a talk show, and one of which was more
of a like an actual fictional story like with an arc. Yeah,
(05:35):
that one was pretty good. Actually, the original British show,
even though it was a lot of American actors, was
was pretty cool and definitely ahead of its time as
far as you know. The whole idea was that this
uh roving reporter was I think Matt Frewer played him
as a real dude and as Max Headroom, but he
was digitally replaced with this character Max Headroom, and at
(05:56):
the time it just seemed really odd. But now when
you look back at it and watch it, it's like, man,
this show was kind of ahead of this. Yeah, it
was really imprescient. Yeah it was. It also revealed where
the name came from, where Matt Frewer's character, as I recall,
is waylaid and the last thing he sees before he
loses consciousness is a sign on a on a a
(06:17):
wall that tells what the Max Headroom for that wall
is pretty clad became the character's name. Yeah. So the
person who appeared on this video was wearing a MAX
Headroom mask and had this corrugated metal background sort of
emulated the digital look, wore the suit that Max Headroom
more like just a dark suit and tie, and um, yeah,
(06:40):
this thing was the metal background. It looked like like
a garage door. It was just sort of spinning in
the background. Yeah, it was. It was on some sort
of gimbal or something. That's what I figured. Yeah, because
you can tell it's swinging back and forth, so predictably
it can't be held by somebody. You had to be
on some sort of pivot or something, and but it's
moving backward and forward. So it kind of mimics that
(07:02):
that digital line twisting in the background. And except for
one part, there's a part where there's a clear cut
in the video. The video itself was about or at
least what we've seen is about a minute and twenty
two seconds. Yeah. Well, actually I don't think we differentiated.
There were two videos, two intrusions. The first one was
short and had no audio and was on w g N,
(07:25):
and then about two hours later they hijacked the PPS
affiliate and that's where the classic minute and a half,
nearly minute and a half with audio, really strange audio
comes through. That's right, because that first one, like you said,
I'm glad you pointed that out, it was silent. It
was the images from the and the image and the
audio from w g N was cut, but there was
(07:46):
no audio coming in other than that. I think there's
like a buzzing noise that came in through the first intrusion,
and you saw this this figure just sitting there and
kind of rocking back and forth like left and right, Yeah,
which is also a disconcerting Yeah, definitely like you felt
like something is really wrong at that moment. And when
(08:07):
it came back, the sportscaster said, you might be wondering
what just happened. I know, I am, uh something along
those lines. But yes, the second one, you had the
audio and it played for the what we what appeared
to be the length of the video. The first section
had uh, the guy just saying odd things and they
were all very Chicago specific well, and and sort of
(08:28):
slamming w g N because he'd slammed the Chuck swart
Sky Yeah as a freaking liberal. Yeah, he's a sportscaster
for w g N. Yeah. And uh he also talked
about the Greatest World Newspaper Nerds something like that. But
w g N stands for World's Greatest Newspaper. Yeah, So
(08:51):
it turned out that that little know, the great the
great World Newspaper Nerds or whatever however he worded it,
that was a reference back to w g N. So
it's very clearly intended for w g N. Yeah. And
the first attack wasn't as effective as as they had
hoped because, uh, like I said, there was no audio.
(09:11):
And also the folks at w g N, once they
figured out something was going on, very quickly changed the
frequency transmitters. So they said, well, just hit PBS, I guess. Yeah, Yeah,
which is interesting. We'll talk more about how that kind
of helps us know a little more about the attackers.
Because here's the other thing. To this day, there there's
(09:32):
no the public has no idea who did this. Yeah.
I think that's why this story has lingered. And it's
so cool is because anytime you have an unsolved mystery,
even if it's uh just sort of an odd broadcast
intrusion like this, people are going to be obsessed with it, like, um,
we've a lot of the information from that I did
research on. Came from a motherboard kind of the mother
(09:55):
of all articles, had some great research, Yeah, Chris Middle
that's yeah. The article, if you want to look for it,
is the Mystery of the Creepiest Television Hack. And I
agree this article is fantastic. It really lays out not
just the incident, but also other things that had happened
beforehand that kind of laid the groundwork for this, as
(10:16):
well as just a discussion, although a brief one, about
the hacker culture that existed at that time and how
that kind of lends itself to people who maybe are
cleverer than is good for them or could be very
nice way to say, yeah, because as it turns out,
the f c C here in the United States does
(10:38):
not take kindly to folks intruding upon established airways. No,
it's it's a big no no, especially with bare butts,
which I think you said. Once the camera cuts, we
didn't continue there. That's when it got really weird because
there's a camera cut and then you see the mask
is off, but the guy has his head out of
(10:59):
frame and it's just sort of holding the mask. Yeah
he is, pants are down showing his his bear Fannie,
and then yeah from profile and then a lady on
the right. Uh, and it looks like some sort of
Old West like Antiochlely type garb. Yeah, spanks him with
the fly swatter on his butt, although spanks is really
being generous. She's very slowly and lightly tapping him on
(11:21):
the bottom with the flyswater, so to the point where
you're you're thinking, like, I guess that's supposed to represent spanking. Uh,
doesn't look like any spanking I ever received as a kid.
I got you. Anyway, That's pretty much where the video
cut off, and then it went right back into Doctor Who,
and which is really funny to see the transition. Yeah, yeah,
he died of an electric shock. Yeah, you've got to
(11:43):
watch the whole incident on YouTube if you haven't already.
And in case you're curious that episode, it's we're talking
classic Doctor Who. Obviously back in seven, this is not
the reboot. It was the Horror of fang Rock. So
if that's your favorite episode, I'm sorry that was interrupted
back in nine seven. So yeah, and like we said,
the the audio really showed that that the public television
(12:06):
station wasn't the intended target. It was. It was a
target of opportunity after the first attempt failed. And uh,
and we'll talk more about the technology behind that and
why they had to switch from one to the other. Um,
it turns out it was largely a practical issue, at
least as far as I can determine. And it was.
(12:29):
There were also references within the little weird diet tribe.
The guy made to Coca Cola because he said catch
the waves and he had a new coat can that
he threw down on the ground. Yeah, And also a
reference to the cult cartoon Clutch Cargo. Yeah, he hummed
the theme Clutch Cargo. If you've ever seen the movie
Pulp Fiction, Um, the scene with young Bruce Willis back
(12:56):
in the nineteen seventies, I guess with Christopher Walkin as
his guardian, he's watching Clutch Cargo on TV. There that
with the mouth's cut out. O'Brien has also used that
same comedic effect using the live action in order because
what what the whole point was was it was an
idea of of reducing the cost of animation big time
(13:18):
because there was no animation. You had to picture, yeah,
still picture, and then you would superimpose live actors mouths
on top of it. And if that sounds creepy and
disturbing to you, you you're on the right track. It
was not the only cartoon to do this. There were
a few others. Um, thank you Cambria Productions for and
(13:39):
uh yeah, so he hummed like the whole Clutch Cargo
theme and made references to actual episodes of Clutch Cargo.
Uh so it was certainly someone with an odd sense
of humor who did this. Now, there was no other message, right,
there was no. It wasn't like a political thing. It
was very stream of consciousness, kind of weird. He holds
up I guess what we can cleanly describe as a
(14:01):
marital aid. Yes, at one point, and throws that on
the ground and um, it's just once the fly swatting
comes in, it's just obvious that they're kind of free forming.
Although it was not live, which is important to know.
This is at some video tape that they made. Yeah, yeah,
and it was because I mean, in order to do
a live intrusion would require essentially a studio and you'd
(14:23):
have to have some sort of link to a transmitter
that also had line of sight to the same antenna
as whatever target you were you're aiming at, So that
would have been an astoundingly complicated. This is definitely a
little easier to pull off. So you know, now that
we know that this, they've they've never been found. They're
(14:44):
likely never to be found. I mean, it's always possible
that someone could come forward and say, all right, well
here's how it actually happened. I'm the guy who did this.
Would I'm surprised that hasn't happened by now because the
statute of limitations is up for Yeah, it's way up,
so you can't get in trouble, and it's um I
think they would unless they just think it's better left
(15:04):
as a mystery. They would live in like especially nowadays
with the Internet like it is, it would blow up,
you know, it would be right. It could possibly be
the fact that I mean, you know, of course we're
just projecting here, but it could possibly be that they
are no longer terribly proud of what they did, and
or that they've moved on in their lives. Yeah, there's
(15:24):
a significant amount of time since then, and they might
have thought you know, I'm not going to brag about
something I did when I was younger and dumber, especially
now that I'm the CEO of ABC, right that that
might end up. By the way, we do not actually
mean that the CEO of ABC or Didney Disney affiliates
are involved. But the other interesting thing is that this
(15:46):
was not the first time that um I A an
intrusion had happened in in broadcast history. The first one,
if you want to go back, actually didn't happen in
the United States, happened back in UH the UK in
nineteen seventies seven, and that was when a hoaxer interrupted
(16:08):
a Southern television broadcast by UH inserting audio. It didn't
change the video, So this is kind of the opposite
of what had happened the first time with the Max
Headroom insteat. But it was an audio stream that came
in and carried a message from the alien villa on UH.
And this is in the like I said, in the UK,
(16:29):
so obviously the alien had an English accent. I guess
that's only you know, fair like, if you're going to
interrupt someone's program, you want to make sure you're speaking
in the dialect, right, Yeah, suddenly they spoke like, like like
with a French accent. I mean that would just be
(16:50):
but anyway, so it was a message that essentially said
that humans should prepare themselves for the worst, because you know,
destruction is a common Yeah, that's great. That's what a
broadcast intrusion should be, right, some creepy warning, not just
a random series of images that disturb you for things
that you can't quite put your finger on, although that
is more disturbing. Almost. Yeah, then six we get the
(17:11):
first one in the United States. Uh, and this was
an inside job deal. This was happened on April at
twelve thirty two am, and it involved the East Coast
feed of HBO. And uh, what happened was the HBO
was showing a movie called The Falcon and the Snowman Classic.
You know, it certainly could not be helped by approximately
(17:35):
four minutes of footage missing because they've been replaced by
a series of colored bars that say good evening, HBO
from Captain Midnight twelve a month no way showtime movie
channel Beware. Yeah, that had a clear motive. Yeah, and
and and actually ironically, the um the guy was caught.
His name was John R. McDougall, and he was an
(17:56):
employee of Central Florida Teleport and he used what do
you use? He the was it the text that he used?
He yeah, so the text generators that the companies used
in order to put an overlay on top of a screen.
So like like the actual words that were being used there, Well,
they're very particular, and by measuring things like the height
(18:18):
of the the font, the how far uh the middle
bar of an e is according to the other side,
how close together those words are, investigators were able to
narrow it down to a specific machine. Yeah, it's pretty there. Yeah, yeah,
this is like incredible forensics, right. It's sort of like
(18:38):
if someone gets hold of a typewritten sheet of paper
and is able to determine the model of typewriter that
was used to actually make this. But in this case
it got even more specific because these machines aren't everywhere,
and that's what led them to track down McDougall, who, uh,
who have just decided that the recent hike in prices
(18:59):
for a monthly subscription to HBO were unconscionable and he
had to make it known. So, yeah, he had a
side job selling satellite dish service yeah, so he thought
that would nick his business some. And so he eventually
was caught and pled guilty, paid a five thousand dollar fine,
and served just one year probation. And it was that
(19:20):
incident that led I believe, Congress to make it a
federal violation to abroad. Yeah, it was a felony all
of a sudden. Yeah, because they suddenly said, wait, now
that people can actually do this. Now great, this was someone,
like we said, an inside job. They had access to,
uh a satellite. What what he actually did was he
pointed the satellite of Central Florida Teleport at the HBO satellite. Chuck,
(19:48):
You and I we wouldn't even know where the heck
that satellite is. Yeah, so even if we had the
equipment and everything else, we'd just beat Well, the sky
is a lot bigger than I had taken into account,
and uh you know, of course we'd have to be
someplace where we could actually get a good clear view
of the sky because if they're building in the way
or something. But uh yeah, so he he was a
(20:11):
good example of that. And then September n so this
is just before the the incident with the Max Headgroom incident,
Thomas Haney hijacked a signal at on the Playboy channel.
I think I remember hearing about this one. Yeah, it
was one where it was sending in religious messages essentially
saying repent and and you know you are, uh, discard
(20:33):
your wicked ways, that kind of thing, right, And it's
no surprise because he actually worked for the Christian Broadcast Network. Yeah,
so again he had a job. Yeah, he had access
to the equipment necessary and the knowledge necessary to be
able to do this. It's not something that the average
person would be able to do. And again it was
the character generator, the the font generator that kind of
(20:55):
led the way. It was the main piece of evidence
that was leveled against him. Um. I remember that Pat
Robertson was very upset when the verdict was handled handed down.
He said that there wasn't enough evidence to um to
say that Haney was in fact the person who who
did this. Well, he was convicted, but um, I think
just got probation. And the first guy, McDougald, is interesting.
(21:17):
What he got convicted for was operating without a license
even though he had a license. So that was a
bit of a hinky ruling. I think they just had
to convict him of something, because I don't know if
the law was in place at that point. Yeah, yeah,
I mean it's it's kind of like that deal where
you realize, this is someone that we need to punish,
but we don't have a law that covers the crime.
(21:37):
We haven't defined it as a crime, but we know
that this is something people really shouldn't be able to do,
so we have to somehow justify it. Um. Yeah. And
as it turns out, the every nation, uh, in some
way or another, ends up regulating the electromagnetic spectrum, but
it changes from one place to the other. Sure, there's
(21:57):
only so much room, right, yeah, exactly. So electromagnetic spectrum
goes all the way from radio waves, which can a
radio wave can be kilometers long, right, and then you
go all the way to the other side to like
gamma rays we're talking about on the nanoscale and everything
in between. That's the electromagnetic spectrum. Visible light is part
of that. You know, visible light is on the short side,
(22:20):
but radio waves and microwaves are on the longer side.
And uh not all those radio waves. You know, we
can't just all use the same ones because then we
would have interference, right if if the television and your
phone used the same frequencies, then you would have interference
between the two and that would be terrible. Nothing would
be usable. Yeah, don't call it a crunch if there's
(22:42):
too much activity on one frequency. Yeah, that's that's if
you've got everyone just using you know what they're supposed to.
Let's say everyone in the cellular network has they're all
on their phones. That we've seen this happen in the
life events the post couldn't. Yeah, or even just going
to a big event like any like c e S
(23:03):
or any large event like that, you suddenly can't get
access to anything. That's where you've got more demand for
data transmission than there is capacity. Yeah, I've tried to
get a signal at Comic Con before and it's no. No,
same thing is true a Dragon Con and that's a
like a third the size of Comic Con. But yeah,
it's It's also true that there are wavelengths within the
(23:25):
electromagnetic spectrum that are really good for carrying data and
some that aren't. So the government has divided up the
electromanetic spectrum and saying these are the sections that can
be used for specific purposes. So a large part of
it is set aside for government and military use a
large part of his side for UH radio SO AM
(23:46):
and FM UH. And then you also have television broadcast
that are that are partial partitioned off as well cellular
data WiFi. All of these things have their specific place
that is mandated by the government. Yeah, we'll be back
with more about the Max Hedgroom incident in just a moment.
(24:13):
So if you go in and start messing around with that,
the government gets breaking up set. Yeah, because I think
you know, it's sort of a Nippot in the bud situation,
like one broadcast intrusion, really no big deal. And that
apparently is why the lead investigator said that um, I
think his name was Marcus. He had a hard time
getting resources because there was a little egg on the
(24:35):
face and they probably just wanted it to go away
more than anything. And no one's really hurt. There was
no damage done, so they're not gonna throw a lot
of money in time trying to find this person. And
and he also had some fairly harsh words for an
fcc UH investigator. He was actually in Chicago. He didn't
name the person and he's still salty about it though. Yeah,
(24:57):
I said that said that this guy wasn't willing to
go and not con doors to actually do some investigation,
and part of that is probably because there was this
embarrassment factor. They're also but without the teeth, you know,
with the authority, it makes it hard for someone to
go out and say there's a justification for spending the time,
resources and money necessarily for a small fine in probation,
(25:20):
even if they do catch the person. Now the maximum fine,
although I doubt that we would see a maximum fine
for something as small as a men and a half
interruption in Doctor Who Doctor Who fans, please don't take
me to task for that. But the maximum fine is
a hundred thousand dollars or a year in jail or both. Yeah,
which they were very big on announcing at the time
(25:42):
as well as UM. I think they had a lot
of misinformation they or I don't know if it's misinformation
or they were trying to get out a little misinformation
saying how sophisticated of an operation it was and how
expensive all the equipment must have been, which is really
not the case now. I think I think it was
a lot of people trying to discourage future pranksters from
(26:03):
following in their footsteps. So that means, well, let's make
sure we we set the the bar very high, saying
it's really hard to do and it's really expensive. Yeah,
and if you do try, it's gonna get even more
expensive for you, because we're gonna find you a hundred
thousand dollars. So now, the truth was that the transmission
equipment that was that could be used to do such
(26:25):
a thing, while brand new, would cost maybe you know,
a few thousand dollars, which is a significant amount of
money once it hits the aftermarket. Like you know, let's
say that you've got a a station, a small station
that is upgrading its equipment and it gets rid of
the old stuff that was on the amateur market. So
you could go out and buy that stuff and it
(26:45):
would be much less expensive than if you were to
buy it brand new. So I mentioned earlier in this
episode about the the hacker culture, Well have you heard
about freakers? Okay, so a freak or spelled p R
E A K I n G. I like it already freaking.
It's all about manipulating the phone system. So Steve Jobs
(27:09):
and Steve Wozniac were freakers, founders of Apple, actually Wasniac
was really the guy who knew how to do it,
but there were a ton of them. One of the
most famous ones his name was Captain Crunch, and Captain
Crunch was called that because he discovered that by using
a Captain Crunch plastic whistle then came in a box
of cereal, he could mimic the tone that the telephone
(27:31):
company was using and allow him to make free long
distance phone calls. So you had this culture of people who, wait,
what's a long distance phone call? Yeah, okay, kids, Once
upon a time, if you wanted to call anyone outside
of your area code, it cost extra. Lady actually tell
me that the other day that was cutting my hair.
(27:51):
She got a phone call. She said, I'm sorry, it's
my daughter long distance. I need to step away. And
I was sitting there, going, what's long distance? Maybe intern national?
That might be it? That's about it, or you could
just keep cutting my hair, right? Yeah, yeah, you know,
it's fine. I mean, I'm not gonna know her half
a conversation, but yeah, the the uh. These were people
(28:12):
who thought that these huge systems were fascinating, that the
telephone system was really interesting, and learning how it worked
was fascinating, and then once you know how it works,
you know how to kind of game the system. Yeah,
and it's not necessarily the case that they were looking
to cause trouble or to be pranksters. Although there was
some mischief involved there too, a lot of it was
(28:33):
more about, oh, now I know how this works, and
that means this works this other way. It was really
more about learning the system and then negotiating it kind
of like, yes, very much like a little mischief, a
little civil disobedience. But I don't think most of these
people early on, we're trying to cause harm. No, it
was really more of insatiable curiosity. Really, I can so
(28:55):
let me just try it out and see if it works.
I think that's exactly what happened with this, Max Head.
I totally agree. You had people who said, let's you know,
we know how radio works. Television broadcast is essentially a
radio broadcast. So once you know how that works, and
once you know that the basics behind it, are there
ways where we could end up injecting our own signal
into this and have a little fun and have a
(29:17):
little fun exactly. And so it was one of those
things where you had the people who had to know how,
and yet the people who had the willingness to do it,
and they were working together to create this prank and
uh again aiming at a very specific target and when
that didn't work, switching to doctor Who, Yeah, I appreciate
the attitude of most of this stuff too. To be honest, Um,
I don't think there's being wrong with a little hi
(29:40):
jinks to thumb your nose at the man if you're
not hurting anybody. Um, I mean, you don't want to
see it all the time because then it takes out
all the teeth out of it. But every now and then,
I kind of like, you know, when they interviewed people
in Chicago, some people on the street were really upset
and some people just kind of laughed. I was like,
I think it's pretty great. Yeah. Yeah, because again, like
like we were saying, there wasn't any lasting harm or right,
(30:00):
and of course not the actual intrusion didn't cause any damage.
It wasn't it wasn't something that was going to wreck
physical equipment. No, you lost eighty seconds of doctor Who, Yeah,
which some might say is some people say it's priceless. Uh,
you know, this is Tom Baker, doctor Who we're talking about, well,
especially back then when you just couldn't go look up
you know the scene that I missed the night before,
(30:21):
like that was a true intrusion. Yeah, yeah, I mean
this is this is obviously pre well. I mean, the
Internet was around, but nobody was on it except for
its boards and stuff that was That was pretty much
what most hackers had access to unless they were in
a university and they had some access to the preliminary
version of the Internet. Um, but there was no worldwide Web.
(30:42):
There was no web. There wouldn't be another. There wouldn't
be a worldwide Web for another five years. So there
was no way of being able to go on and
and check something you missed, Nor was there a way
for you to really easily communicate with folks all over
the world. Now they could do it with local Bolton
board system And in fact, that's what we suspect, or
(31:03):
at least there there's a lot of suspicion that, in fact,
one of the local Chicago bbs is had people in
a forum who were at least tangentially involved in this,
if not directly responsible. But to really understand what was
going on, it helps to understand how a broadcast. Television
(31:23):
broadcast actually works. So here we go. We're gonna going
back to the analog days of TV broadcast technology. So now, Chuck,
you've you've been in a television studio too, right, Yeah,
you and you and Josh I'm sure have done some
of this. I've done some of this. When you see
how a TV studio works, it's actually very eye opening.
(31:45):
I mean to me, it completely pulled away a lot
of misconceptions that I had had. For example, you think
of like cameraman, but in large part camera operation is
done remotely, not behind a camera. Right. Uh. These cameras
that you see in the studio are enormous and they're heavy.
(32:06):
And this is also the reason why I'm explaining this
is also to to illustrate why doing this live would
have been impractical. Yea, these television cameras are the reason
why they're so big and heavy is in part so
that they're incredibly smooth and steady and they aren't going
to jitter. If you know, you could drop something right
(32:29):
next to one, it's not going to move at all. Yeah,
it's the same reason a camera Dolly ways, you know,
a thousand pounds. Yeah, yeah, it's in order to get
that that stability that you want, so that you have
thousand pounds. By the way, they're less than that, but
they're super heavy for that reason, right, you want that
stability and that smoothness. Uh. And also, television camera doesn't
pick up sound. It doesn't have a microphone on it.
(32:51):
It's all about just capturing the image. Yeah, the mic
the sound is captured separately and together. They explain the magic. Yeah.
So the photons, that's the particles of light that are
coming from a scene and are being captured by a camera.
The light passes through a lens, which goes through a prism.
The prism is the purpose of a prism is to
(33:13):
break up light into its component parts. And this case,
we're talking about a prism that breaks light into red, green,
and blue. That's all you needed. And each of those
streams goes and is hit by or it hits a
c c D a charge couple device. Now a charge
couple device. What does is when photons hit it, it it
(33:33):
generates a stream of electricity that essentially reflects the nature
of the photons that hit it. So you've got these
three streams coming out the red, green, and blue. Uh.
They then go into an encoder. Meanwhile, the sound that
you're creating is also going to head back over towards
the master control room. The information from the encoder goes
(33:55):
to the master control room, it gets mixed together. So
you then have a saynal that has both video and sound.
Now there, if you were to be able to visualize this, uh,
it would actually be like the the visual data would
make up most of the a range of frequencies like
four within four mega hurts, and then the very edge
(34:20):
of it, like on the far right side, that would
represent the sound. So it's just a little sliver that's
the sound. Yeah, and you're either preparing to broadcast this
out to the masses live or you're just putting it
to tape to do so later. Yeah, these days we
put on a sea or both. Yeah, exactly if you
wanted to to to keep it forever. Now, you may
have heard that there were times where people were broadcasting
(34:43):
stuff and never recording it. So there there are things
that have been created for television that we will never
see again. It's kind of like in some ways going
to see a live stage show. If you were there,
you saw it and weren't that's it. But uh, in
this case, where talking about a live newscast, So that's
being broadcast out from that point. When it's all been encoded,
(35:06):
and you've got this video signal that has all the information.
It's got the red, the green, the blue, and the
audio all four things that you need, Yeah, it's time
to transmit that out and it goes from the studio
to a transmitter. It's called a studio transmitter link. Now,
most studios don't have an enormous antenna that's at a
(35:28):
really high elevation in broadcast to the general area. Cities
share them. Yeah, and we're talking about an era of
over the air television, right, You're using your antenna to
pick up wavelengths. So what what they would do is
they would use the studio transmitter link to beam this
information to a nearby antenna on a very tall building. Yeah.
(35:51):
Usually the tallest buildings in your city will have these,
and Chicago has a lot of tall building, yes, and
they use them for that purpose exactly. So if you
stream that out to the antenna, the antenna then ends
up broadcasting an electro magnetic signal and that ends up
being picked up by the antenna of your television, which
(36:12):
the electromagnetic signal when it hits the antenna generates an
electrical current. A tuner in your television is able to
focus in on a specific channel and thus kind of
filter the signal from the noise, and then it ends
up pulling out that video stream creating the red, green, blue,
and the audio, and you get your TV that you
get to watch. It's beautiful. It's I joked with you
(36:37):
earlier that we should just give them the explanation from
Willy Wonka, which is slightly more simplistic but but easier
to explain. But unfortunately it's not quite that easy. So
knowing how this works, where you've got the signal coming
from the studio being transmitted out to a giant antenna
and then broadcast to an area, there are several areas
(37:01):
that could be potentially vulnerable to intrusion. If you are
working on the inside, then if you're able to intercept
and put in a new signal to go to the
studio transmitter link to go out, then you're done. That's
all you need to do. You need just very easy
to do and very easy to trace back exactly. Yeah,
inside job, you're like, well, let's look at the people
(37:23):
who have access, because now that's all that could have
done this, But as it turns out, with a over
the air analog transmission, there was an easier way of
doing this where you didn't have to break into the
studio to do it. It was pretty great, actually. Yeah,
So all you have to do, and I say all
you have to do this still is pretty significant, is
(37:44):
you have to have a transmitter of your own. You
have to be able to have a direct line of
sight to the antenna that's going to pick up the
transmission from the studio, and you have to transmit on
the frequency that the studio uses at a higher intensity
than what the studio is doing. And then the antenna,
which is stupid. Yeah, it can't differentiate all of noses.
(38:06):
That's a bad signal. I don't want to broadcast. They
don't know that if it's the right frequency, it's going
to broadcast it. So when you hit the antenna, it's
gonna go for the strongest signal. I mean, this makes
sense because if you had two signals that were the
same frequency and one is stronger than the other, chances
are the other frequency is coming from a different source
further away, and that's not the one you want to transmit. Yes,
(38:29):
so literally all they needed. I mean, they didn't need
to to blow it out of the water, They just
needed to be stronger and to do so. Do you
just need to be a little closer. Yeah, it may
be a lot closer in this case, but but yeah, exactly,
they just had to be somewhere along the pathway from
the studio to the antenna that was being used. Uh,
they and they just had to transmit on the right frequency,
(38:51):
which was that was information they could get. They could
get the information on what frequency to use. So you've
got your transmitter, you've got your media, which in this
case was a tape that they had shot earlier that
wasn't lying. You're probably on a building, and they've got
to be somewhere pretty high up. So yeah, likely on
top of a building or at least on like a
balcony or fire escape or something where they can have
(39:11):
a line of sight. Uh, they are. They've got their
transmitter and geared up to the right amount of power,
they shoot it off and everything else is taken care
of for them. They don't try to do anything else.
In this case, the John Hancock building in the Sears
Tower with the two towers that had these two receivers.
And there's been a lot of theories over the years. Um,
most people believe they were probably high up, but I
(39:33):
have seen one theory that they were mobile in a van.
Not necessarily high up, but just super super close they Yeah,
that would also require them to have some way of
maintaining that line of sight and that that steady transmission,
because you know, if you if you don't, if you
don't have your electromagnetic waves directed right at the receiver,
(39:57):
then it's point it's not going to be a strong
enough sick. Yeah, I don't. I don't buy the van theory.
It would be really really challenging powering everything. It's to
be a pretty more sophisticated. It does make me suddenly
think that the Scooby Gang was responsible for it, because
you've got the big rubber mask like old man Withers.
We have a bit more to say about the Max
(40:17):
Headroom incident, but before we get to that, let's take
this quick break. So Channel nine, which was w g
N in Chicago. Uh, if you look at the channels
in the United States, they actually have the designated frequencies
they have to you know, use at least the range
(40:40):
that's around a D eight seven mega hurts. So you
tune your transmitter to that signal and you aim it
at the you know where the antenna is. You've identified that,
you've got it all lined up, and you're good to go. Well,
once w g N changed their frequency, that meant that
it didn't matter how much power they poured into the transit.
It's like you're speaking the wrong language. So that meant
(41:04):
that suddenly their their prank didn't really go anywhere. They
had a brief appearance with no audio. Yeah, so they
probably did something a little wrong on their end, on
their well, probably wasn't a test run. They probably wanted
it to work right, right right, But then unfortunately for them,
unfortunately for them, it didn't work with you know, without
a hitch. So they then say, well, what can we do?
(41:26):
How can we um save this and maybe get the
actual video that we shot scene and great, Yeah, if
you guys haven't watched this video, you really kind of
need to. But at any rate, so they then decided
to do their backup plan. They knew the frequency that
(41:46):
the local public broadcast channel was using, and they knew
that that antenna was on top of the sears tower
and that they could aim at that one. And uh so,
whether or not they had to relocate, they they probably
did it just to get a good line of sight
on the on the antenna. But uh it was only
(42:06):
a two hour time difference between the first attack and
the second attack, so to retune the transmitter, to prep
it to get ready to hit the target, and to
make sure you have a line of sight on it,
they probably stayed in the same general area, which is
northwest part of Chicago. Northwest. Yeah, there's actually that that
(42:27):
article we were talking about, the Motherboard article. They have
a great picture that shows the location of both studios
and both antenna and it kind of shows you like
an area where where the two lines almost crossed, and
you figure, I bet, I bet they were somewhere in
this general area so that they could if they didn't
have to relocate. Uh then they just you know, shifted position,
(42:52):
or maybe they relocated by a couple of blocks. Um,
which raises the question how they get access to a
high enough area and still have power and all that
kind of stuff. Right now, they were just on their
buddies the roof of his apartment with an extension quarter.
That's probably what happened. Uh. So they then did the
second attack at eleven o'clock or eleven fourteen, and that
(43:15):
one worked much better. Um. And like we said, the
material they had, the equipment they had was readily available,
wasn't It wasn't as rare as you would think it
would be. No. Dr Marcus, the lead investigator, said that, uh,
like a direct TV size intent of these days, it
is about all you would have needed. It's not like
one of those like school bus size stillite used to
(43:37):
see in backyards back in the day. It's pretty incredible. Uh,
the how little you would need in order to do it.
So fascinating attack, fascinating fact that it they were able
to do it without being caught. Um. And the fact
that you know, there weren't a whole lot of broadcast
intrusions after this point. You heard about maybe one or
(44:00):
to the Disney Channel has infamously been the attack the
side of an attack on multiple occasions. Yeah. I think
the Super Bowl was hijacked briefly a few years ago
in one city only though. Yeah. Yeah, Uh, it's it's
harder and harder to do now because you've got things
like digital encoding. Yeah, that make it much much more
(44:22):
difficult for the average hacker to do. I'm surprised it
didn't happen more often back in those days, with those
early I think there's sort of the wild West. It
may very well have been that the scare tactics the
FCC used. We have totally worried, Like people said like, well,
I know I can do this, but I'm totally not
gonna do this. Um, and you know, we we talked
a little bit. Uh. There are some theories out there
(44:45):
about who it could have been responsible for this. My
favorite was the the one that is probably the easiest
to dismiss, which was Eric Fournier, who was a punk
rock musician as well as an avant garde artist who
created a series of videos. Um. It's funny because the
Motherboard article refers to it as a YouTube channel, but
(45:07):
in fact the videos predate YouTube. Oh yeah, I guess
it is now on a YouTube channel. But they were
called shay h s h A y E St John
Sha st John. And if you look at these, you
you've forced me to earlier. They do have similar quality, um,
very a similar feel, almost absurd, surreal, disturbing. Doesn't necessarily
(45:28):
make much sense. You know, I think of it like
you you've seen the horror movies where they all um
center around like a creepy looking doll. Right, that's a
that's a genre unto itself. There's a brand new one,
right about a doll ab Yeah. Yeah, so that's the
fact that I responded so quickly with that is not
(45:49):
good for me. But yeah, it's this idea of things
that look not quite right. And the st John videos
are all about that, and they involve the looping of
certain phrases over and over again, experiments and lighting experiments
in uh camera angles, as well as digital effects or
(46:12):
maybe not even digital effects but special effects. The earlier
ones are actually more trippy the ones that are on
the YouTube channel itself. Um, so you can see that
the there's some shared uh aesthetics. Yeah, and he lived
in Indiana, apparently just a few hours from Chicago. Um.
(46:32):
He passed away in two thousand tens, so we'll never know.
I read one article that said that he admitted to
his friends that it was him, but I couldn't find
anything else to substantiate that. And the Motherboard article goes
so far as to suggest that that it's not him.
It's not him, because his friends all said he at
that time in ven he had no knowledge of video editing.
(46:54):
All the video stuff he did was later on. It
was in the late nineties, early two thousand's, so it
would make sense that, um, while it's the same sort
of kind of humor, it's not the same person. Yeah.
His old bandmate even said, you know, Eric didn't do this,
but he would have loved it. Yeah, he would have
thought it was really funny. Yeah. Yeah, And there's another
(47:17):
theory that Ice per sal and read it. That's how
I saw the link to motherboard, and you sent me
the link and I saw it and read it as well. Yeah,
this one holds some water to me. Unless this guy
Bowie j is that Pogue poagg one of the two,
unless he is just making all this stuff up. This
(47:40):
otherwise this sounds like a pretty decent lead. Yeah, I've
heard I've heard some people suggest that that perhaps the
guy himself is the one who did it, and he's
invented these personas to be the way of him explaining
how it was done without actually admitting that he did it.
But he he maintains his innocence. He says, no, I
really all of the evidence I have is early circumstantial.
(48:01):
I was thirteen when this happened, which to me suggests
that it's not him. Right, It does not seem like
a thirteen year old. No, there's no way. The voice
in the video is distorted, but it does. It definitely
seems like it's someone who's older than that. Um. But
he talks about uh, two brothers and one brother he said,
he described him as seeming to be on the autism spectrum,
(48:24):
and that he had a very keen interest in broadcast
spectrum and broadcast technology, but didn't have very many social skills. Yeah,
he was the poag. Yeah, he was very big as
a thirteen year old on that in that hacker scene.
But trying it sounded like really like one of the
young ones trying to ingratiate himself into the group, into
(48:47):
the group. These were a little older guys who were
more experienced. Um. He calls them J and K, which
are not their names, to provide their you know, to
guard their anonymity. And he said that Ja, who was
supposedly the autistic one, is Um. He's the one who
says that was the guy in the mask. They had
the same build. He references his brother in the video. Yeah,
(49:07):
he says that because he he shows a glove and
he says, uh, this one is dirty. My brother is
wearing the other one. Yeah, he apparently, he says, this
is from his reddit. He said, Uh, he liked to
tell dirty jokes. The dirty jokes were funny, at least
to me. Is a thirteen year old and a woman
dressed up as Antioakley swatting someone's bare butt with a
fly swatter is a perfect reflection of his sense of humor. Uh.
(49:31):
It was usually childish and sexually deviant. Yea. And he
talked about how he had kind of a verbal tick
that instead of saying uh, when he was trying to
think of something, he'd say oh yeah, and that if
you listen to the video, there's some there's a yeah,
there's a lot of him kind of making oh noises
between when he's saying things. Yeah. So it does kind
(49:54):
of come across as someone who's trying to think of
the next thing to say, Like, it didn't feel like
it's He does not feel that the Max Headroom incident
was terribly scripted, Like I think it was a lot
off the cuffman. Yeah. So the the other brother, Kay
was Jay's caretaker uh and also was possibly. The theory
(50:17):
seems to be that Kay was the one working the camera,
that Ja was the one on camera, and that Kay's
girlfriend was the one with the fly swatter, and again
all of this ends up being circumstantial evidence. He said that,
as uh Pogue said, as a thirteen year old, he
went to this apartment that was just filled with equipment.
(50:39):
He says that there was nothing, you know, no normal
decorations except like a rainbow kite or something in there.
Everything else was electronic equipment and that they were the
people they were talking about something but not explicitly talking about,
just saying that something big was gonna happen and that
he should definitely make sure to be watching channel nine
(51:00):
at nine pm, uh like w g N at nine pm,
so he could see the big thing that was going
to happen, and that he claims he didn't even put
two and two together, ye like, he saw the incident
go down and knew that something big was going to happen,
which does seem a little hinky to me, but he
says years later, as when it all kind of connected
for me, it seems a little weird. That does seem
(51:21):
a little weird to me too, but he said. He
does go on to defend himself a bit and say,
you know that there were I heard a dozen things
from them a day that we're just sort of weird
and out there, and it wouldn't register as anything big
to me. With they said, you know, we're gonna do
something big watch the TV tonight. So in other words,
they were a bunch of big talkers, but not Yeah,
(51:42):
this is a kid. He's trying to fit in. He
you know, it sounds like he was kind of nervous
hanging around this crowd, eager to please. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Well,
at any rate, he's the one who on Reddit just
laid out the situation and explained what he thought had
happened based upon circumstantial evidence. Again, he never witnessed any
of the us himself, according to his account, and it
(52:02):
kind of blew up on Reddit, didn't it? I did?
It did? And he gave specific updates and in fact,
he was interviewed heavily for the Motherboard article. Yeah, and
he explained that he tried to get in touch with
j and k Um through multiple media, like he knows
where they are still. Yep, he sent them Facebook messages,
he sent an email, and he sent them actual snail mail,
(52:24):
right and didn't get any response. And he says, I'm
taking that as a indication that they don't want to
talk about this, and so out of respect for their privacy,
I'm dropping it. Yeah, And so he never revealed the
identities of the people. Now, he did have other people
on the reddit the said they were around that same
scene back then, and it sort of checks out. The
(52:45):
guy had a similar ability short of shortened squatty and um,
so he had a little bit of support. But it's
all circumstantial and conjecture. You know, there's obviously no proof,
no smoking gun, right, so we may never know for
sure who did this. We'll have someone will have to
them forward. That's the only way. Yeah. But it's one
of those mysteries that is really interesting to read about too.
(53:06):
And the fact that it it's still you know, you
can you can watch the video, you can actually see
what happened. It's kind of cool because there are a
lot of these these weird moments you just have second
or third hand accounts and you can't you can't really
experience it for yourself. You have to think, oh, what
would it have been like, But now you can actually see. Yeah,
it's a pretty neat little time capsule experience, especially if
(53:27):
you grew up in the eighties, right, And if you
don't know who Max Headroom is, then maybe you should
do some research on that first and then watch the
video to understand how weird this was. That b B show.
I'm telling you it's pretty good. People should watch that. Yeah, totally, Well, Chuck,
I have to thank you for coming on the show
and for suggesting this. This was a ton of fun too.
I love on stuff. You should know doing our more
(53:48):
history centric ones, and this this is totally a history
podcast when you think about it. For history episode. Yeah. Absolutely.
I hope you enjoyed that classic episode of tech Stuff
published several years ago. Now, I should probably do another
episode about incidents in which people were able to overpower
television or radio signals and create pirate stations and that
(54:11):
sort of stuff. I think that would be a fun
episode to do, so I'm thinking about doing that in
the near future. If you have suggestions for topics I
should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, let me
know on Twitter. The handle we use there is tech
Stuff hsw and I'll talk to again really soon. Tech
(54:35):
Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more podcasts
from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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