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Right now on the Horror of Fang Rock.
In our country, this is a very famous episode, for reasons not related to the show.
The Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion was a television signal hijacking that occurred in Chicago, Illinois, United States on the evening of November 22, 1987. It is an example of what is known in the television business as broadcast signal intrusion. The intruder was successful in interrupting two broadcast television stations within the course of three hours. The hijacker and accomplices have partially been identified after a person on Reddit in 2010 claimed he knew the people behind the incident a little while later another user stepped up to confirm the identities but the names have never been released
Later that night, around 11:15 p.m. Central Time, during a broadcast of the Doctor Who serial “Horror of Fang Rock”, PBS member station WTTW (channel 11)’s signal was hijacked by the same person, apparently, that was broadcast during the WGN-TV hijack, this time with distorted and crackling audio.
The episode of Doctor Who was interrupted by television static, to which an unidentified man appeared, mentioning WGN pundit, Chuck Swirsky, whom he says he is better than as well as calling Swirsky a “Fucking/Freaking Liberal”. The man started to moan, scream and laugh. He continued to laugh and utter various random and unrelated phrases, including New Coke’s advertising slogan “Catch the Wave” while holding a Pepsi can (Max Headroom was a Coca-Cola spokesperson at the time), then tossing the can down, leaning towards the camera and giving the finger wearing a rubber extension over his middle finger, although it was hard to see the gesture. He then retrieved the Pepsi can, and sang “Your love is fading”, before removing the rubber extension, then began humming the theme song to Clutch Cargo, pausing to say “I still see the X”, which referred to the final episode of the series, before resuming humming again. He then began to moan painfully, exclaiming about his piles (a reference to Preparation H), after which an indistinguishable flatulence sound was heard. He then stated that he had “made a giant masterpiece for all the greatest world newspaper nerds” (the WGN call letters used by the Chicago television station as well as its sister radio station are an abbreviation for “World’s Greatest Newspaper”, in reference to the flagship newspaper of their corporate parent, the Tribune Company’s Chicago Tribune). He then held up a glove and said, “My brother is wearing the other one,” and he put the glove on, “but it’s dirty! Looks like you got footprints on it!” He then threw the glove down in disgust.
The picture suddenly cut over to a shot of the man’s lower torso. His buttocks were partly exposed, and he was holding the now-removed mask up to the camera (with the rubber extension now placed in the mouth of the mask), howling, “They’re coming to get me!” An unidentified accomplice wearing a French maid outfit said to him, “Bend over, bitch!”
The accomplice then started to spank the man with a flyswatter as the man screamed loudly. The transmission then blacked out for a few seconds before resuming the Doctor Who episode in progress; the hijack lasted for about 90 seconds.[3]
WTTW, which maintained its transmitter atop the Sears Tower, found that its engineers were unable to stop the hijacker, due to the high microwave signals that the hijacker was using, as well as the fact that there were no engineers on duty at the Sears Tower at the time of the hijacking. According to station spokesman Anders Yocom, technicians monitoring the transmission “attempted to take corrective measures, but couldn’t.”[4] “By the time our people began looking into what was going on, it was over,” he told the Chicago Tribune. WTTW was able to find copies of the hijacker’s telecast with the help of Doctor Who fans who had been taping the show.[2]
The incident in question.
