Working with these two posters, Chris Knittel of Vice and Motherboard wrote a complete article with additional research that confirms the veracity of the two anonymous posters' stories, leading to the conclusion that the mystery had been solved. In 2013, a follow-up to the discussion from Reddit's Chicago forum verified the original poster's details and confirmed the story. On April 10, 2010, a Reddit poster claimed to know the people behind the hijacking incident. It is also possible they were aware that WTTV would not have on-site technicians available to shut down the hijacking so late at night, but that a large number of viewers would witness the incident due to the popularity of Doctor Who. After being almost immediately kicked from WGN-TV, the hijackers may have chosen the more vulnerable target of WTTV without bothering to edit their previous message to WGN-TV. Similarly, a reference to legendary Chicago sports announcer Chuck Swirsky, and the fact that the initial intrusion was attempted during a sports report, seem to indicate the video was originally intended to be show in its entirety during the first hijacking, taking advantage of WGN-TV's greater broadcasting area and the large audience that would have been watching the evening news. Max's statement about "World's Greatest Newspaper nerds" is a reference to the WGN-TV call-letters (WGN is an abbreviation of "World's Greatest Newspaper"). Premium cable channels assured subscribers that they did not need to fear similar interruptions, and though concerns continued that the hijackers would strike again, the incident was not repeated. The hijackers may have been using the hijacking as an early form of cyberterrorism to prove that the new encryption methods were not foolproof. Immediately after the hijacking, widespread media coverage suspected the hijacking was a protest of the then-recent rise of premium cable channels using satellite encryption to prevent non-subscribers from viewing their offerings, similar to the "Captain Midnight" HBO intrusion incident 19 months earlier. The incident was largely decried as immature and even obscene. The video then goes black for several seconds before ending. He cries out "Oh, my piles!" followed by a flatulence sound, then states, "I just made a giant masterpiece for all the World's Greatest Newspaper nerds." He also hums the Clutch Cargo theme song and states "I still see the X!", a reference to the final episode of Clutch Cargo, "Big 'X'".Īfter just over a minute of seemingly meaningless non sequiturs, the footage cuts to an image of Max bent over, his naked buttocks exposed in side view, while a woman in a French maid costume spanks him with a fly-swatter. Max mutters pop cultural phrases like "Catch the wave" (the catchphrase of New Coke, for which the real Headroom was then spokesperson) and "Your love is fading" (possibly a reference to The Temptations song "(I Know) I'm Losing You"). This time, the hijackers were able to successfully transmit their message, albeit with heavily distorted audio. A station spokesman later stated that by the time engineers could be dispatched, the incident had ended. Due to the late hour, there were no WTTW engineers available to reroute the signal, leaving technicians to monitor the situation but unable to stop it. This hijack briefly took over the regular programming on WTTW (a PBS station) during an airing of the Doctor Who episode "Horror of Fang Rock".
The second hijacking took place around 11:15 PM CST on the same night. Max Headroom WTTW Pirating Incident - 11 22 87 (Subtitled) Roan returned to the screen, saying, "Well, if you're wondering what just happened, so am I." The intrusion ended after only a few seconds when WGN-TV engineers were able to switch the frequency of their studio feed to a different transmitter.
The noise was likely due to a failure to hijack the station's audio frequencies. At approximately 9:14 PM CST, a sports broadcast by anchor Dan Roan was interrupted by a distorted, shaking background, an ominous buzzing noise, and the face of a man in a Max Headroom mask. The first hijacking took place during a news broadcast on now-famed Chicago station WGN-TV.
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