After a few moments of static, viewers were returned to the Doctor Who broadcast.

He then exposed his buttocks, saying 'they're coming to get me', while a female figure spanked him with a flyswatter.

After singing 'your love is fading', humming the theme song to the 1959 TV series Clutch Cargo, and saying 'I still see the X' (a reference to last episode of that show) he said he had 'made a giant masterpiece for all the greatest world newspaper nerds' (WGN's call letters stand for 'World's Greatest Newspaper'). The masked figure made a reference to WGN sportscaster Chuck Swirsky, whom he called a 'frickin' liberal', held up a can of Pepsi while saying 'Catch the wave' (a slogan from an ad campaign for Coca-Cola featuring the character Max Headroom), and held up a middle finger (inside what appeared to be a hollowed-out dildo ). Later that night, during a broadcast of the Doctor Who serial Horror of Fang Rock on local PBS station WTTW, the signal was again interrupted by video of the Max Headroom impersonator, this time with distorted audio. WTTWįile:Max Headroom broadcast intrusion.webm įollowing the incident, sports anchor Dan Roan commented, 'Well, if you're wondering what's happened, so am I', and joked that the computer running the news 'took off and went wild' he then repeated his report of the day's Chicago Bears game. The hijack lasted 28 seconds, and was stopped after engineers at WGN switched the broadcast frequency of their link to the transmitter atop the John Hancock Center. For 15 seconds, the screen went black, then displayed a person wearing a Max Headroom mask and sunglasses, accompanied by a buzzing sound and swaying in front of a rotating corrugated metal panel that mimicked Max Headroom's geometric background effect.

The first signal intrusion took place during the sports segment of a live broadcast of WGN-TV's The Nine O'Clock News. File:WGN-TV 'Max Headroom' Incident' (1987).webm

Max headroom intrusion