Techstuff Classic: The Max Headroom Incident

face interrupted some television broadcast signals and made history. And speaking of history, Chuck Bryant, historic podcast giant in his own right and co host of Stuff You Should Know as well as the host of movie Crush, joined me for this episode to talk all about this interesting moment in tech history and the the move of signal pirates. How was that even possible? So I hope you enjoyed

this classic episode of tech Stuff. Chuck. If you were in Chicago on November two and you were watching h w g N at nine pm because you 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 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, yeah 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 in normal service. Yeah, what they call it 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 there's something that, especially when it's something as ritualistic as the news, you know 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 horse and a new picture popped up and replaced the sportscaster, and it was a guy in a disturbing rubber mask 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 Bedroom loomed large for a while.

And I know when this intrusion came out, 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. Yeah. 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, 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 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 character that was supposed to look 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 look like kind of just like Neon stripes that were constantly twisting and turning in different ways.

And he would stutter, you have a 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 an with an arc. Yeah, 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 the time it just seemed really odd, But now when you look back at it and watch it, it's like, man, the show was kind of ahead of this. Yeah, it was really prescient. 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 wall that's tells what the Max Headroom for. That wall is pretty clad became the character's name. Uh 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, 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 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, and then about two hours later they hijacked the PBS 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 no audio coming out of the 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, which is concerning. Yeah, it was definitely like you felt

like something is really wrong at that moment. And when 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 slamming w g N because he slammed the Chuck swart

Sky Yeah as a freaking liberal. Yeah that one think he is 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

Old's Greatest Newspaper. That. Yeah, So it turned out that that little know, the great the great World Newspaper Nerds or whatever however worded it, that was a reference back to w g N. So it's very clearly intended for w g N. And the first attack wasn't as effective as as they had hoped because, uh, like I said, there was no audio. 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, we'll 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 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. Um. We've a lot of the information from that I did research on came from a motherboard kind of the mother of all articles, some great research yea Chris middle who wrote this. 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 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 way

to say. Yeah, because as it turns out, the f c C here in the United States does not take kindly to folks intruding upon established airways. No, it's it's a big no no, especially with bare butt, 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 frame and is

just sort of holding the mask. He has pants 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 Antiochley type. Garb spanked him with a fly swatter on his butt, although spanks is really being generous. She's very slowly and lightly tapping him on 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. And 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 watch the whole incident on YouTube if you haven't already, and in case you're cure areous, that episode is we're talking classic Doctor Who obviously back in seven. This is not the reboot. Uh, it was the Horror of fang Rock.

So if that's your favorite episode, I'm sorry that was interrupted back. So yeah, and like we said, the the audio really showed that that the public television station wasn't the intended target. It was the 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.

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 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 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. 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 who and 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, this very stream of consciousness kind of weird. He holds up, I guess what we

can cleanly describe as a 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 a 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 have to have some sort of linked 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 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 from 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 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 there's 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 might end up, By the way, we do not actually mean that the CEO of ABC or Didny Disney affiliates are involved, of course, of course. But the other interesting thing is that this was not the first time that um A 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. It happened back in UH the UK in nineteen seventies seven, and that was when a hoaxer interrupted a Southern television

broadcast by UH inserting audio. It didn't change the video. So this was kind of the opposite of what had happened the first time with the Max Hedroum incident. But it was an audio stream that came in and carried a message from the alien villain. Uh, and this is in the like I said, in the UK, 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, you know, right, Yeah, suddenly they spoke like like with a French accent. I mean that would just be adding insult in 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, 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 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 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 and and and actually ironically the um the guy was caught. His name was John R. McDougall, and he was an employee of Central Florida Teleport And he used what do he 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 of the the font, the how far uh the middle bar of an e is according to the other sides, how close together those words are, investigators were able to narrow it down to a specific machine. Yeah, it's pretty fingerprint up there. Yeah. Yeah,

this is like incredible forensics, right. It's sort of like 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 had just decided that the recent hike in prices 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 incident that led I believe Congress to make it a federal violation to a broad 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 a satellite. What what he actually did was he pointed the satellite of Central Florida Teleport at the HBO satellite. So easy, chuck, you and I we wouldn't even know where the heck that satellite is. So even if we had the equipment and everything else, we'd just beat it. 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 good example of that. And then September, so this is just before the the incident with the Max Hedgerm incident, Thomas Hainey 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 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 uh, the average person would be able to do. And again it was the character generator, the the font generator that kind of 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, McDougall, is interesting. 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, and 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 it 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 only so much room, right, yeah, exactly. So electromatic 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, 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, a crunch if there's 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 they're post nine eleven New York couldn't. Yeah, or even just going to a big event like any like c e S 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 ye, no, no, the 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 electromagnetic spectrum that are really good for carrying data and some that aren't. So the government has divided up the electromannetic 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 radio so AM and FM UH. And then you also have television broadcasts 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. Well, guys, Chuck and I have a lot more to talk about with the Max Headroom incident, but before we continue, let's take a quick

break to thank our sponsor. So if you go in and start messing around with that, the government gets pretty upset. Yeah, because I think, you know, it's sort of in Nipot 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 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. I'm 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's still salt about it though, Yeah, I said that said that this guy wasn't willing to go and knock on 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 investigating for a small fine and probation 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 min 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, as well as a 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 in the case now. I think I think it was a lot of people

trying to discourage future pranksters from following in there. 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. Try. 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 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. You could go out and buy that stuff and it 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 freaker spelled p r e A k I n G freaking. It's all about manipulating the phone system. So Steve Jobs 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 that came in a box of cereal, he could mimic the tone that the telephone company was using and allow him to make free long distance phone calls. So you had this culture of people who were 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, 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? Yeah? Maybe international? Yeah that might be it. That's about it. Or you can just keep cutting my hair right, Yeah, yeah, you know it's fine. I mean, I'm not gonna know her half

the conversation. But yeah, the the uh. These were people 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 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 and then negotiating it kind of like war games. 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, like really, I can, so let me just try it out right and see if it works. I think that's exactly what happened with this, Max he I totally agree. You had people who said,

let's you know, we know how radio works. The 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 little fun exactly. And so it was one of those things where you had the people who had to know how, and you have 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 anything wrong with a little hi 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 laughing. It's like I

think it's pretty great. Yeah yeah, because again, like like we were saying, there wasn't any lasting harm here, right 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 and 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, 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 it was like bullets and boards and stuff. Yeah, 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. 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 systems, And in fact, that's what we suspect, or 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 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. I mean to me, it's completely pulled away a lot of misconceptions that I had had. For example, you think of like cameramen, 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. And this is also the reason why I'm explaining this is also to to illustrate why doing this live would have been impractical. 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 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, want that stability and that smoothness. Uh. And also, television camera doesn't pick up sound, doesn't have a microphone on it. It's all about just capturing the image. Yeah, the mic

the sound is captured separately. And yeah, so the photons, that's the particles of light that are coming from a scene 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 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 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 to the

master control room, it gets mixed together. So you then have a signal 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 like four within four mega hurts, and then the very edge 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 do so later. Yeah, these days we put on a server, I guess 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 stuff and never according 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 you weren't that's it's but uh, in this case, we're talking about a live newscast. So that's being broadcast out from that point. When it's all been encoded 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 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 trend emitter link to beam this information to a nearby antenna on a very tall building. Yeah.

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 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 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 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 who have access. 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 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. That's a bad signal. I don't want to proast, but they don't know if

it's the right frequency, it's gonna 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, 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, maybe a lot closer in this case, but but yeah, exactly, they just had to be somewhere along the path way from the studio to the antenna that was being used. Uh, they and they just had to transmit on the right frequency, 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. Because 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. They can have 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 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 have seen one theory that they were mobile in a van, 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, then it's going it's not going to be a strong enough signal. Yeah, I

don't I don't buy the van theory. It would be really really challenging, e empowering everything. It's wuld 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 Nan Withers. We've got a bit more to talk about when it comes to this crazy incident in tech history. But before we conclude, let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor. 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 our least the range that's around a D eighties 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 transact. It's like you're speaking the wrong language. So that meant that suddenly there 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 there 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, how can we um save this and maybe get the actual video that we shot scene and yeah, if you guys haven't watched this video, you really kind of need too. But at any rate, so they then decided to do their backup plan. They knew the frequency that 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 just to get a good line of sight on the on the antenna, but uh it was only 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 article we were talking about, the Motherboard article. They have a great picture that shows the location of both studios on both antenna and it kind of shows you like an area where where the two lines almost cross, 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, or maybe they relocated by a couple of blocks. Um, which raises the question, how did 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 court. That's probably what happened. Uh. So they then did the second attack at eleven o'clock

or eleven fourteen, and that 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 Antenta these days, it is about all you would have needed. It's not like one of those like school bus size satis in backyards back in to 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've heard about maybe one or two. 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 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 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 in fact the videos pre date YouTube. Oh yeah, I

guess it is now on a YouTube channel. But they were called shay uh s h A y e St John Sha st John. And if you look at these, you you've forced me to earlier. Uh they do have similar quality, um, very similar feel almost absurd, surreal, disturbing. Doesn't necessarily 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,

it's a genre unto itself. There's a brand new one right about it all and about yeah yeah, so that's the fact that I responded so quickly with that is not good for me. But yeah, it's this idea of things that look not quite right, and the Saint 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 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, 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 n he had no knowledge of video editing. 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. He would have thought it was really funny. Yeah. Yeah, and there's another theory that Ice first saw 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 a po Poagg, one of the two poag, Unless he is just making all this stuff up right this 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 purely circumstantial. I was thirteen when this happened, which to me suggests that it's not him. It does not seem like a

thirteen year old. 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, 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 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 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 Jay, who was supposedly the autistic one, was 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, 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. It was usually childish and sexually deviant. Yeah. 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, 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. So it does kind of come across as someone who's trying to think of the next thing to say. Like, it didn't feel like it certainly does not feel that the Max Headroom incident was terribly scripted, Like I think it was a lot off

the cup unless. Yeah. So the the other brother, Kay, was Jay's caretaker h and also was possibly the theory seems to be that k 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 Poche said, as a thirteen year old, he went

to this apartment that was just filled with equipment. Yeah, he says, the 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 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, 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 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 it's happened as 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 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 this himself, according to his account, and it 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 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 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. And so he never revealed the identities of the people. No, he did have other well on the Reddit the said they were around that same scene back then, and it sort of checks out. The 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 come forward. This the only way. Yeah, but it's one of those mysteries that is really interesting to read about. To to 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 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, is pretty good. People should watch that. Yeah, totally, guys. I hope you enjoyed this classic episode of Tech Stuff. Big thanks once again to Chuck Bryant for agreeing to

be on it. It was a lot of fun to explore this story, one that I had heard about, I had seen the videos. I found them a little unsettling, honestly. Uh and other people just find them funny. It all depends on your your sense of humor, I guess. But it was really interesting to take a deeper dive and really learned the the story behind it as much as

we do know, and how it was even possible. And uh, guys, if you're thinking about trying to pirate various signals out there, first of all, you're gonna need a pretty powerful transmitter. Second of all, don't don't you know, don't don't be dumb, as Josh Clark, the other co host of Stuff You Should Know, would say. And I hope you guys enjoyed it. If you guys have any suggestions for future episodes of

tech Stuff, send me an email. The addresses tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, or you can draw me a lot on Facebook or Twitter. The handle of both of those is text Stuff h s W. Follow us on Instagram and I will talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics, because it how stuff works dot com