Southern Television broadcast interruption - November 26, 1977

On this day in 1977, a Southern Television news broadcast was interrupted by a cryptic voice claiming to be an alien and advocating for peace on Earth. 

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello Again. It's Eaves and you're listening to
This Day in History Class, a podcast that truly believes
no day is boring. Today is November. The day was

(00:25):
November nineteen. Southern Television's news anchor Andrew Gardner was presenting
the news when at five ten pm, the news was
interrupted by a distorted voice delivering a cryptic message. It
was the first major broadcast interruption and it's still a
mystery who was responsible for it. Southern Television was the

(00:48):
license holder for the I t V service that covered
parts of the south, southeast and southwest of England. The
Southern Television broadcast was interrupted via the handing to and
transmitter near the village of Hannington in England. The TV
image wobbled a little, then the sound was replaced with
the mysterious audio. The voice speaking in the transmission identified

(01:12):
itself as Reland, an alien that claimed to be a
representative of a body called the Ashtar galactic command. It
urged humans to live in peace to avoid disaster. Here's
an excerpt from the transmission. Be still now and listen,
for your chance may not come again. All your weapons
of evil must be removed. The time for conflict is

(01:35):
now passed, and the race of which you are apart
may proceed to the higher stages of its evolution. If
you show yourselves worthy to do this, you have but
a short time to learn to live together in peace
and goodwill. Small groups all over the planet are learning
this and exists to pass on the light of the
dawning new Age to you all. You are free to

(01:57):
accept or reject their teachings, but only those learned to
live in peace will pass to the higher realms of
spiritual evolution. As TV engineers worked to figure out what
was going on, TV visuals continued as normal. The communication
ended about six minutes after it began, with villain saying
that it was quote leaving the planes of your existence.

(02:20):
When it ended, a Looney Tunes cartoon was on air.
The station apologized for a quote breakthrough in sound, but
the press jumped on the story, and even I TV
was reporting the incident on its own news network. The
broadcast interruption was a hoax, as the Independent Broadcasting Authority
announced after the incident. It was a broadcast signal intrusion,

(02:43):
where a hacker gets control of a broadcast frequency. The
hacker likely jammed Southern Television's transmitter by putting another low
power transmitter close to it, but some people were still
concerned about the strange message, and many called Southern Television
voicing their worry. Not everyone accepted the interruption as a hoax.

(03:03):
Some believed that an alien really was the culprit. There
are still conspiracy theories around the incident, since the person
who conducted the interruption never stepped up, and because there's
disagreement over whether the voice actually said the name Reylon
or said a different name. I'm Eve Jeffcote and hopefully
you know a little more about history today than you

(03:24):
did yesterday. Spend some of your daily social media time
with us at T D I h C podcast. If
you prefer something a little bit more formal, then you
can write us at this Day at I heart media
dot com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you again tomorrow.

(03:52):
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.