March 20, 2024 • 20 mins
Max Headroom TV signal hijacking Chicago 1987 scary story. This true scary story is from Episode #8 of Your Scary Stories. Your Scary Stories is a show focused on sharing your true scary stories LIVE every Monday at 10:30pm EST. To learn more about the Show, or to submit your true scary story go to YourScaryStories.com.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
Okay, we'll move on to thenext story. I'm excited about this story.
It's got video with it. Idon't know how familiar you are with
the Max Headroom signal hijacking in nineteeneighty seven. I know a bit about
it. Yeah, we're gonna talkabout that tonight. A lot of people
consider this to be really scary.To me, it's almost humorous, but
I can see where it's pretty freakytoo though. Oh yeah, and this
(00:29):
is a well known thing. Butthere's got to be people watching this right
now that have not heard of this, and I'm excited to share that with
them. Sound good, Okay,So, yeah, this is the Max
Headroom signal hijacking. On the nightof November twenty second, nineteen eighty seven,
the television signals of two stations inChicago, Illinois were hijacked, briefly
sending a pirate broadcast of an unidentifiedperson wearing a Max Headroom mask and costume
(00:56):
to thousands of home viewers. So, just to go to a little bit
of a backstory year on what orwho rather Max Headroom is. He's a
fictional character that they really got goingin the eighties. I think it was
actually played by an actor. Butthis is advertised as like the first computer
generated TV host TV presenter. Itwas clearly just an actor. I think
(01:17):
they got makeup on him and otherprosthetic things and contact lenses, and I
think the way they shot with thecamera they tried to make it look like
this was an AI generated person.The lighting looked weird, right, and
he would have this weird the backgroundto be moving, these like straight bars
had been moving behind him, andhe actually caught on. I think it
(01:38):
started as like he had like atelevision series and stuff. He caught on
to the point where I believe majorcompanies were using him, like Coca Cola
for other advertisements, things like thathe was well known. Put it that
away. This is not the firsttime this had happened with the broadcast television.
There was a real notable event thathappened the year before with HBO where
(02:00):
somebody had hijacked the HBO signal andbroadcast at a message essentially complained about the
price jack and then I don't wantto mess up the terminology, but HBO
basically made it where you weren't goingto see it for free anymore. They
would mess with the image. Ithink they called it scrambled it. So
this wasn't a new event, newthing that happened, but this is definitely,
(02:21):
like probably the most notable one.Obviously there's stories that go back to
like War of the World's Plan onradio and stuff like that, but this
one is pretty creepy, so we'llget into it here. Okay. So
yeah, like I said, thiswas the night of November twenty second,
nineteen eighty seven. This takes placein Chicago, Illinois. The first hijacking
of the radio of the airwave tookplace at nine to fourteen PM during a
(02:44):
sports segment on WGN's TVs the nineo'clock news. Home viewer screens went black
for about fifteen seconds before footage ofa person wearing and Max's headroom mask and
sunglasses is displayed. The individual rockserratically in front of the rotating metal panel
behind him. You could tell it'sit's somebody in a Max Headroom costume,
(03:07):
but they're trying to mimic this backgroundthat's moving around. Like we talked about,
it was just a bunch of buzzingsounds on this first one is as
if the audio did not go through, So it was strange. This lasted
about twenty seconds and was cut offwhen the engineers that were on shift then
changed the frequency of the signal linkingthe broadcast studio to the transmitter on top
(03:29):
of the John Hancock Center. Ido have a video to share of this
first event when they were able totake over the this particular news channel.
Slowt me pull it up here,dump of Pine McMahon McKennon fourteen Nothing bears.
(04:15):
Well, if you're wondering what's happened, so on my actually the computer
that we have running our news fromtime to time took off and went wild.
So what we're gonna do is tartover from the top of the Bears
and tell you once again about thethirty to ten victory they had over Detroit
today out of Soldier Field. Soyeah, this first instance goes by and
the news crew on shift actually acknowledgesit, right. They don't know what
(04:41):
happened back then. Funky things thathappened sometimes, like what you're trying to
display would get scrambled or whatever itget stuck on the screen, So they're
not really sure what happened. Atthis point in time. Like I said,
there's no audio, it's just abrief interruption. I think that I
say maybe fifteen seconds. I thinkthe whole thing went on twenty seconds in
(05:02):
total, So just weird. Nineto fourteen at night is a very is
a primetime television time, right Imean. And they kind of blew it
off and said it was the computerdoing funky things, which I guess back
then probably people didn't really know asmuch about computers either, right, so
they're just like, hey, thisis just this is computer acting funky.
(05:24):
Right. Moving on later in thenight. This is at about eleven twenty
pm, and that is the samenight. However, this is a different
station. The first one was WGNTVthat eleven twenty pm on WTTW. It's
the essentially the local signal for thePBS station. It was interrupted during Doctor
Who. It was a horror offang Rock, which I'm not familiar with
(05:47):
that, But the culprit of thishijacking of the airwave was the same.
It was the Max Headroom impersonator,and this time audio actually came through.
Let's just go ahead and share thatclip before we discuss it. This is
where things get freaky. You shoulddo gotten with the old ones of your
child. But it is the onlyway to learn. I'll get you a
(06:10):
hot drink and dry checks worst casesas Oh, I guess they're giant master
(07:11):
my greatest barl newspaper nerds. Mymother were the other one. Suppose I
(07:45):
can tell the massive Yeah, freaky, So let we'll go on with the
description of the events. Here themass figure made a comment about nerds,
calling w G and sportscaster Chuck Sworskya freaking liberal, held up can at
Pepsi while saying catch the wave.That's a slogan from the campaign for Coca
Cola. That what we were talkingabout the Max Headroom character was doing,
(08:07):
and held up the middle finger insidewhat appears to be a hollowed out sex
toy. The figure then ran througha series of quick comments and in song
snippets with exciting noises and explanations,Max saying the phrase your love is fading
Hu, part of the theme songfor the nineteen fifty nine animated series Clutch
Cargo, and he then said Istill see the X. This was a
(08:28):
reference to the last episode of thatshow. He also started rambling randomly about
the files and explained that he hadmade a giant masterpiece for the Greatest World
Newspaper nerds. WGN's call letters actuallystood for World's Greatest Newspaper. Could have
just mixed up there, and hewas describing sharing dirty gloves with his brother.
(08:52):
After a crude video edit, theperson had mostly off screen at this
point. He had his partially exposed, but talks visible from the side with
a female figure wearing a French madecostume what appears to be a mask.
This is on the right side ofthe frame. She is spanking him with
the fly'swater and he was holding themask out there for a second before that
(09:13):
and scream and I know they're coming, make it stop. The female,
like I said, figure was spankinghim fly'swater. The image faded into static,
then viewers were returned to the doctorwho broadcast this is a total interruption
about ninety seconds. Technicians at thestations could not counteract to takeover because there
were no engineers on duty when thishappened. So this is a SEARS tower
(09:37):
now known as Willis Tower. Iguess where the station's broadcast tower is located.
According to the station spokesperson, techniciansmonitoring the transmission from the headquarters attempted
to take countermeasures but couldn't The directorrecalled that as the content got weirder,
we got increasingly stressed out about ourinability to do anything. The pirate broadcast
(09:58):
actually ended because the pirates transmitting endedit. By the time the people really
got into looking what was going on, it was already over with. They
received a bunch of phone calls aboutthis. Then some experts. FCC gets
involved in stuff, and the broadcastintrusion was archived by sending a more powerful
(10:20):
microwave transmission to the station's broadcast towersthan the stations were sending themselves, triggering
a capture effect. This was adifficult task in nineteen eighty seven, but
was possible before American television stations switchedfrom analog to digital signals in two thousand
and nine. But even so,we've seen things happen with the digital signals.
It's just not quite as easy todo, I guess. Experts have
(10:41):
said that this stunt required extensive technicalexpertise and a significant amount of transmitting power,
and that the pirate broadcast likely originatedfrom in the line of sight of
both station broad broadcast towers. Noone has ever claimed responsibility for this.
There's a lot of speculation now upthere about the identity of this Max person.
(11:03):
Really, nothing solid has ever comeout of this. People have said
it's former employees upset with the station. People have tried to connect it to
various other people. Nothing's ever comeof it. Soon after the investigation,
FCC official quoted it in news,reporting that perpetrators would phase A five,
which excuse me, face a maximumfine of ten thousand dollars and up to
(11:24):
a year in prison. However,the five year statute limitation has done long
past. No one's ever been identifiedin the case of who did this?
I love that so much. Iguess it's crazy and messed up, right,
but I love how like crazy earlytelevision, you know, eighties television
(11:46):
was out, like there's no securityat all. You just needed a lot
of electrical power and an antenna andyou could blow out their transmission and take
it over. That's so crazy.Yeah, what happened where it didn't really
work? The first time? Iget somebody was there working. First of
all, they're able to counter it, but it's like the audio didn't go
(12:07):
through. I guess it must bewhen you're intercepting a signal. Maybe it
varies. I think they had justenough power to get on the screen,
but not enough to blow out theiraudio entirely. Do you think this is
scary to some people watching it?Absolutely? Yeah, I mean it's crazy.
This is a crazy person doing this. I mean, obviously whoever did
(12:28):
it is slightly unhinged. And soyou have a person that has it's like
the Joker and in Batman he takesover the airwaves at one point and he
does a broadcast like this in themac Michael Keaton Batman. I thank even
So, yeah, this is acrazy person would do and if they actually
(12:48):
applied themselves, they could be aterrifying person. Yeah, we got a
lot of comments saying things like thatunstable person. Then people are asking why
would they come forward now? Rightlike it's all done. They can't get
ruble for it. Nobody had aclay responsibility for it though it seems like
something you'd be like, oh,I did that. You know it's crazy,
as I'm sure you are. Besidesthe people who did it, I'm
(13:09):
sure that there are a lot ofpeople in deeper par pockets of the Internet
who know who did it. AndI don't understand why no one's coming forward.
That is super weird because there's morethan just the people who were there
who know guaranteed they probably told somebodyat some point. A lot of people
are so sure it's an inside job. I'm not so sure. Yeah.
(13:31):
So, like you mentioned early onin the HBO thing which happened like the
year before or something like that,Yeah, so that was a guy who
who did run like another station andhe just sucked hijack. Yeah, he
hijacked their signal to you know,everything like that. So like these people
(13:52):
probably had access to some stuff andthey just decided to use it for something
crazy, Like they weren't like partof WGN or was WGN Is that right?
The first one is WGN, thesecond was wttw okay Yeah, yeah,
so I don't believe they were affiliatedwith either of those two stations,
(14:13):
but they were definitely people who workedat somewhat other stations because they knew at
least the broadcasting power. So whenI was researching the HBO in the incident
that happened here before, they weretalking about how there for a while they
were like both amping up their powerto see who it who could take over
the frequency, but HBO actually backedoff because they were worried that it would
(14:37):
blow their trans I get like blowa transmit or I don't know how to
describe it. They're worried that itwould damage their satellite if they continue to
up their power. So that's why, I mean, that's why they like
let it go. Yeah, it'sreally crazy, And like I said,
that's something I really like about thatera of TV and radio and stuff like
(14:58):
that. Radio is still saying whatyou can build a little FM transmitter and
then pump in a lot of electricityand you'll overpower the local FM radio.
They gather his HBO got like aone year probation in his ham radio license
second way for a year or somethinglike that. That sounds about right.
Yeah, you see, it's weirdlike these uh these uh finds and like
(15:22):
everything seems a little low. Butafter but because of the HBO thing,
they made a federal offense. Ohdid they? Yeah, so that's why
the person didn't come forward then yeah, but now so long later, it's
like, why why would you notdo that? Let's talk about the obscene
gestures he was doing though, Luke, that was gross, Like it's a
(15:43):
gross thing to do. It's agross person to do that. And light
because you're you don't know who's gonnabe watching this. Granted this was at
like eleven o'clock at night and buteleven twenty, but this was still a
PBS station like oh broadcasting dish.They entered a couple kids. They interviewed
like a bunch of different people,like I saw news reports. Some people
(16:03):
were like it was funny. Somepeople were basically called them terrorists. Some
people were kids are staying, they'rescared. There's like a bunch of different
It was a mixed reaction, butsome people were legitimately freaked out. So
here's the thing. These people aredeliberately doing weird, gross stuff like that
when they know it was a goodchance to a kid is going to be
on the other side of that,and so yeah, that's a terrifyingly gross
(16:26):
thing to do. It's a weirdthing to do. I just think it's
funny that it was even impossible tobe done. Like it's you know,
technology has changed so much. Theylike you said, it can still technically
be done in some instances, butit's a lot harder. That's definitely pumped
a lot of power. I sawone where this had happened in the last
(16:48):
fifteen years I believe. Oh wherewas it. I don't know. If
it's a Montana, I don't know. But somebody was able to hijack like
the emergency system. So it cameon or like you know, like public
service like emergency service announcement, andthey said the zombies. They basically said
the dead was coming back to alive. The person caught and got in trouble.
(17:10):
But so it's still possible, butit definitely seems like what it was
analog that was kind of like afree for all. Yeah, I remember
when that happened. Actually, wellI don't remember the year obviously, but
I remember hearing about it. Thatreminds me of another story in Hawaii when
it wasn't someone hijacked the emergency broadcasts, but someone made a mistake with the
(17:33):
emergency broadcast and they broadcasted a nukewas on the way. Wow. And
this happened I think maybe six orseven years ago. It wasn't very long
ago now, and so a lotof people believed they were gonna die.
So it caused about like it waslike fifteen fifteen, twenty minutes of just
(17:53):
pure chaos. I had someone said, doctor who got a little more PG.
Maybe I had to blur out thebutt talks. Yeah, like I've
seen the unboured video. Oh atone point, so you did. I
fear it's more appropriate. It's notreally definitely get the point. You get
(18:15):
the point. I mean, it'sit's gross, it's weird. Why the
hell do weird do that? Definitelyseveral people involved, though there's a person
filming it, just twisting the cameratrying to create this effect. You got
a person in a French made outfit, so there's not just one person behind
it. Yeah, and the Frenchmaid was definitely a female person. Yes,
weeah. People were really You couldbasically come to the conclusion this wasn't
(18:40):
live. It was recorded because thecut in the video. Yeah, I
guess the creepy part is the scarypart is what was the purpose? Was
there a message they were trying togive or because nobody really got it.
People have their opinion on things.But I think it was a narcissistic sociopath
kind of saying like they were justlike, hey, we could do this.
These people are stupid. We canjust do this ourselves and mess with
(19:04):
everybody, and they think they knewwas working to counter it. I think
so yeah, I think that theyknew well, they probably guessed that nobody
was gonna be there, and theyprobably figured, well, we got enough
juice, we can pull this off, and we'll be legends because everybody's gonna
be talking about us for the nextthirty years people still are. Do you
(19:25):
think the scary part is that thiscould be done though? Like what else
could happen? Yeah? Because,like you know, they could have done
stuff that you have more malicious ifthey wanted to. Yeah, they showed
a definite flaw in the system andall you needed was power and you could
do ever you want. You maynever know. It's like Cooper, they're
(19:45):
playing guy will never know, youknow. Yeah, so say like that
may he may be a future storyright there. Yeah, there you go.
Uh, good one. I enjoyedthat one. I did too.
I was I didn't know that's whatyou were gonna go do, and I'm
really excited about it. I'm gladthat one. And what's the one with?
Yeah, it's awesome. Jeff TownsendMedia sees you good night, and
(20:10):
the question is do I stay here? Will you be back? Are you
gonna come back? Will you beback? Are you coming back?
Okay, we'll move on to thenext story. I'm excited about this story.
It's got video with it. Idon't know how familiar you are with
the Max Headroom signal hijacking in nineteeneighty seven. I know a bit about
it. Yeah, we're gonna talkabout that tonight. A lot of people
consider this to be really scary.To me, it's almost humorous, but
I can see where it's pretty freakytoo though. Oh yeah, and this
(00:29):
is a well known thing. Butthere's got to be people watching this right
now that have not heard of this, and I'm excited to share that with
them. Sound good, Okay,So, yeah, this is the Max
Headroom signal hijacking. On the nightof November twenty second, nineteen eighty seven,
the television signals of two stations inChicago, Illinois were hijacked, briefly
sending a pirate broadcast of an unidentifiedperson wearing a Max Headroom mask and costume
(00:56):
to thousands of home viewers. So, just to go to a little bit
of a backstory year on what orwho rather Max Headroom is. He's a
fictional character that they really got goingin the eighties. I think it was
actually played by an actor. Butthis is advertised as like the first computer
generated TV host TV presenter. Itwas clearly just an actor. I think
(01:17):
they got makeup on him and otherprosthetic things and contact lenses, and I
think the way they shot with thecamera they tried to make it look like
this was an AI generated person.The lighting looked weird, right, and
he would have this weird the backgroundto be moving, these like straight bars
had been moving behind him, andhe actually caught on. I think it
(01:38):
started as like he had like atelevision series and stuff. He caught on
to the point where I believe majorcompanies were using him, like Coca Cola
for other advertisements, things like thathe was well known. Put it that
away. This is not the firsttime this had happened with the broadcast television.
There was a real notable event thathappened the year before with HBO where
(02:00):
somebody had hijacked the HBO signal andbroadcast at a message essentially complained about the
price jack and then I don't wantto mess up the terminology, but HBO
basically made it where you weren't goingto see it for free anymore. They
would mess with the image. Ithink they called it scrambled it. So
this wasn't a new event, newthing that happened, but this is definitely,
(02:21):
like probably the most notable one.Obviously there's stories that go back to
like War of the World's Plan onradio and stuff like that, but this
one is pretty creepy, so we'llget into it here. Okay. So
yeah, like I said, thiswas the night of November twenty second,
nineteen eighty seven. This takes placein Chicago, Illinois. The first hijacking
of the radio of the airwave tookplace at nine to fourteen PM during a
(02:44):
sports segment on WGN's TVs the nineo'clock news. Home viewer screens went black
for about fifteen seconds before footage ofa person wearing and Max's headroom mask and
sunglasses is displayed. The individual rockserratically in front of the rotating metal panel
behind him. You could tell it'sit's somebody in a Max Headroom costume,
(03:07):
but they're trying to mimic this backgroundthat's moving around. Like we talked about,
it was just a bunch of buzzingsounds on this first one is as
if the audio did not go through, So it was strange. This lasted
about twenty seconds and was cut offwhen the engineers that were on shift then
changed the frequency of the signal linkingthe broadcast studio to the transmitter on top
(03:29):
of the John Hancock Center. Ido have a video to share of this
first event when they were able totake over the this particular news channel.
Slowt me pull it up here,dump of Pine McMahon McKennon fourteen Nothing bears.
(04:15):
Well, if you're wondering what's happened, so on my actually the computer
that we have running our news fromtime to time took off and went wild.
So what we're gonna do is tartover from the top of the Bears
and tell you once again about thethirty to ten victory they had over Detroit
today out of Soldier Field. Soyeah, this first instance goes by and
the news crew on shift actually acknowledgesit, right. They don't know what
(04:41):
happened back then. Funky things thathappened sometimes, like what you're trying to
display would get scrambled or whatever itget stuck on the screen, So they're
not really sure what happened. Atthis point in time. Like I said,
there's no audio, it's just abrief interruption. I think that I
say maybe fifteen seconds. I thinkthe whole thing went on twenty seconds in
(05:02):
total, So just weird. Nineto fourteen at night is a very is
a primetime television time, right Imean. And they kind of blew it
off and said it was the computerdoing funky things, which I guess back
then probably people didn't really know asmuch about computers either, right, so
they're just like, hey, thisis just this is computer acting funky.
(05:24):
Right. Moving on later in thenight. This is at about eleven twenty
pm, and that is the samenight. However, this is a different
station. The first one was WGNTVthat eleven twenty pm on WTTW. It's
the essentially the local signal for thePBS station. It was interrupted during Doctor
Who. It was a horror offang Rock, which I'm not familiar with
(05:47):
that, But the culprit of thishijacking of the airwave was the same.
It was the Max Headroom impersonator,and this time audio actually came through.
Let's just go ahead and share thatclip before we discuss it. This is
where things get freaky. You shoulddo gotten with the old ones of your
child. But it is the onlyway to learn. I'll get you a
(06:10):
hot drink and dry checks worst casesas Oh, I guess they're giant master
(07:11):
my greatest barl newspaper nerds. Mymother were the other one. Suppose I
(07:45):
can tell the massive Yeah, freaky, So let we'll go on with the
description of the events. Here themass figure made a comment about nerds,
calling w G and sportscaster Chuck Sworskya freaking liberal, held up can at
Pepsi while saying catch the wave.That's a slogan from the campaign for Coca
Cola. That what we were talkingabout the Max Headroom character was doing,
(08:07):
and held up the middle finger insidewhat appears to be a hollowed out sex
toy. The figure then ran througha series of quick comments and in song
snippets with exciting noises and explanations,Max saying the phrase your love is fading
Hu, part of the theme songfor the nineteen fifty nine animated series Clutch
Cargo, and he then said Istill see the X. This was a
(08:28):
reference to the last episode of thatshow. He also started rambling randomly about
the files and explained that he hadmade a giant masterpiece for the Greatest World
Newspaper nerds. WGN's call letters actuallystood for World's Greatest Newspaper. Could have
just mixed up there, and hewas describing sharing dirty gloves with his brother.
(08:52):
After a crude video edit, theperson had mostly off screen at this
point. He had his partially exposed, but talks visible from the side with
a female figure wearing a French madecostume what appears to be a mask.
This is on the right side ofthe frame. She is spanking him with
the fly'swater and he was holding themask out there for a second before that
(09:13):
and scream and I know they're coming, make it stop. The female,
like I said, figure was spankinghim fly'swater. The image faded into static,
then viewers were returned to the doctorwho broadcast this is a total interruption
about ninety seconds. Technicians at thestations could not counteract to takeover because there
were no engineers on duty when thishappened. So this is a SEARS tower
(09:37):
now known as Willis Tower. Iguess where the station's broadcast tower is located.
According to the station spokesperson, techniciansmonitoring the transmission from the headquarters attempted
to take countermeasures but couldn't The directorrecalled that as the content got weirder,
we got increasingly stressed out about ourinability to do anything. The pirate broadcast
(09:58):
actually ended because the pirates transmitting endedit. By the time the people really
got into looking what was going on, it was already over with. They
received a bunch of phone calls aboutthis. Then some experts. FCC gets
involved in stuff, and the broadcastintrusion was archived by sending a more powerful
(10:20):
microwave transmission to the station's broadcast towersthan the stations were sending themselves, triggering
a capture effect. This was adifficult task in nineteen eighty seven, but
was possible before American television stations switchedfrom analog to digital signals in two thousand
and nine. But even so,we've seen things happen with the digital signals.
It's just not quite as easy todo, I guess. Experts have
(10:41):
said that this stunt required extensive technicalexpertise and a significant amount of transmitting power,
and that the pirate broadcast likely originatedfrom in the line of sight of
both station broad broadcast towers. Noone has ever claimed responsibility for this.
There's a lot of speculation now upthere about the identity of this Max person.
(11:03):
Really, nothing solid has ever comeout of this. People have said
it's former employees upset with the station. People have tried to connect it to
various other people. Nothing's ever comeof it. Soon after the investigation,
FCC official quoted it in news,reporting that perpetrators would phase A five,
which excuse me, face a maximumfine of ten thousand dollars and up to
(11:24):
a year in prison. However,the five year statute limitation has done long
past. No one's ever been identifiedin the case of who did this?
I love that so much. Iguess it's crazy and messed up, right,
but I love how like crazy earlytelevision, you know, eighties television
(11:46):
was out, like there's no securityat all. You just needed a lot
of electrical power and an antenna andyou could blow out their transmission and take
it over. That's so crazy.Yeah, what happened where it didn't really
work? The first time? Iget somebody was there working. First of
all, they're able to counter it, but it's like the audio didn't go
(12:07):
through. I guess it must bewhen you're intercepting a signal. Maybe it
varies. I think they had justenough power to get on the screen,
but not enough to blow out theiraudio entirely. Do you think this is
scary to some people watching it?Absolutely? Yeah, I mean it's crazy.
This is a crazy person doing this. I mean, obviously whoever did
(12:28):
it is slightly unhinged. And soyou have a person that has it's like
the Joker and in Batman he takesover the airwaves at one point and he
does a broadcast like this in themac Michael Keaton Batman. I thank even
So, yeah, this is acrazy person would do and if they actually
(12:48):
applied themselves, they could be aterrifying person. Yeah, we got a
lot of comments saying things like thatunstable person. Then people are asking why
would they come forward now? Rightlike it's all done. They can't get
ruble for it. Nobody had aclay responsibility for it though it seems like
something you'd be like, oh,I did that. You know it's crazy,
as I'm sure you are. Besidesthe people who did it, I'm
(13:09):
sure that there are a lot ofpeople in deeper par pockets of the Internet
who know who did it. AndI don't understand why no one's coming forward.
That is super weird because there's morethan just the people who were there
who know guaranteed they probably told somebodyat some point. A lot of people
are so sure it's an inside job. I'm not so sure. Yeah.
(13:31):
So, like you mentioned early onin the HBO thing which happened like the
year before or something like that,Yeah, so that was a guy who
who did run like another station andhe just sucked hijack. Yeah, he
hijacked their signal to you know,everything like that. So like these people
(13:52):
probably had access to some stuff andthey just decided to use it for something
crazy, Like they weren't like partof WGN or was WGN Is that right?
The first one is WGN, thesecond was wttw okay Yeah, yeah,
so I don't believe they were affiliatedwith either of those two stations,
(14:13):
but they were definitely people who workedat somewhat other stations because they knew at
least the broadcasting power. So whenI was researching the HBO in the incident
that happened here before, they weretalking about how there for a while they
were like both amping up their powerto see who it who could take over
the frequency, but HBO actually backedoff because they were worried that it would
(14:37):
blow their trans I get like blowa transmit or I don't know how to
describe it. They're worried that itwould damage their satellite if they continue to
up their power. So that's why, I mean, that's why they like
let it go. Yeah, it'sreally crazy, And like I said,
that's something I really like about thatera of TV and radio and stuff like
(14:58):
that. Radio is still saying whatyou can build a little FM transmitter and
then pump in a lot of electricityand you'll overpower the local FM radio.
They gather his HBO got like aone year probation in his ham radio license
second way for a year or somethinglike that. That sounds about right.
Yeah, you see, it's weirdlike these uh these uh finds and like
(15:22):
everything seems a little low. Butafter but because of the HBO thing,
they made a federal offense. Ohdid they? Yeah, so that's why
the person didn't come forward then yeah, but now so long later, it's
like, why why would you notdo that? Let's talk about the obscene
gestures he was doing though, Luke, that was gross, Like it's a
(15:43):
gross thing to do. It's agross person to do that. And light
because you're you don't know who's gonnabe watching this. Granted this was at
like eleven o'clock at night and buteleven twenty, but this was still a
PBS station like oh broadcasting dish.They entered a couple kids. They interviewed
like a bunch of different people,like I saw news reports. Some people
(16:03):
were like it was funny. Somepeople were basically called them terrorists. Some
people were kids are staying, they'rescared. There's like a bunch of different
It was a mixed reaction, butsome people were legitimately freaked out. So
here's the thing. These people aredeliberately doing weird, gross stuff like that
when they know it was a goodchance to a kid is going to be
on the other side of that,and so yeah, that's a terrifyingly gross
(16:26):
thing to do. It's a weirdthing to do. I just think it's
funny that it was even impossible tobe done. Like it's you know,
technology has changed so much. Theylike you said, it can still technically
be done in some instances, butit's a lot harder. That's definitely pumped
a lot of power. I sawone where this had happened in the last
(16:48):
fifteen years I believe. Oh wherewas it. I don't know. If
it's a Montana, I don't know. But somebody was able to hijack like
the emergency system. So it cameon or like you know, like public
service like emergency service announcement, andthey said the zombies. They basically said
the dead was coming back to alive. The person caught and got in trouble.
(17:10):
But so it's still possible, butit definitely seems like what it was
analog that was kind of like afree for all. Yeah, I remember
when that happened. Actually, wellI don't remember the year obviously, but
I remember hearing about it. Thatreminds me of another story in Hawaii when
it wasn't someone hijacked the emergency broadcasts, but someone made a mistake with the
(17:33):
emergency broadcast and they broadcasted a nukewas on the way. Wow. And
this happened I think maybe six orseven years ago. It wasn't very long
ago now, and so a lotof people believed they were gonna die.
So it caused about like it waslike fifteen fifteen, twenty minutes of just
(17:53):
pure chaos. I had someone said, doctor who got a little more PG.
Maybe I had to blur out thebutt talks. Yeah, like I've
seen the unboured video. Oh atone point, so you did. I
fear it's more appropriate. It's notreally definitely get the point. You get
(18:15):
the point. I mean, it'sit's gross, it's weird. Why the
hell do weird do that? Definitelyseveral people involved, though there's a person
filming it, just twisting the cameratrying to create this effect. You got
a person in a French made outfit, so there's not just one person behind
it. Yeah, and the Frenchmaid was definitely a female person. Yes,
weeah. People were really You couldbasically come to the conclusion this wasn't
(18:40):
live. It was recorded because thecut in the video. Yeah, I
guess the creepy part is the scarypart is what was the purpose? Was
there a message they were trying togive or because nobody really got it.
People have their opinion on things.But I think it was a narcissistic sociopath
kind of saying like they were justlike, hey, we could do this.
These people are stupid. We canjust do this ourselves and mess with
(19:04):
everybody, and they think they knewwas working to counter it. I think
so yeah, I think that theyknew well, they probably guessed that nobody
was gonna be there, and theyprobably figured, well, we got enough
juice, we can pull this off, and we'll be legends because everybody's gonna
be talking about us for the nextthirty years people still are. Do you
(19:25):
think the scary part is that thiscould be done though? Like what else
could happen? Yeah? Because,like you know, they could have done
stuff that you have more malicious ifthey wanted to. Yeah, they showed
a definite flaw in the system andall you needed was power and you could
do ever you want. You maynever know. It's like Cooper, they're
(19:45):
playing guy will never know, youknow. Yeah, so say like that
may he may be a future storyright there. Yeah, there you go.
Uh, good one. I enjoyedthat one. I did too.
I was I didn't know that's whatyou were gonna go do, and I'm
really excited about it. I'm gladthat one. And what's the one with?
Yeah, it's awesome. Jeff TownsendMedia sees you good night, and
(20:10):
the question is do I stay here? Will you be back? Are you
gonna come back? Will you beback? Are you coming back?
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