Max Headroom signal hijacking (MAX HIJACK)

Max Headroom signal hijacking (also known as the Max Headroom incident) was a hijacking of the television signals of two stations in Chicago, Illinois, on November 22, 1987, that briefly sent a pirate broadcast of an unidentified person wearing a Max Headroom mask and costume to thousands of home viewers. The first incident took place during the sports segment of independent TV station WGN-TV's 9:00 p.m. newscast and featured a person wearing a mask swaying erratically in front of a semi-swiveling corrugated metal panel, apparently meant to resemble Max Headroom's animated geometric background. Unlike the later intrusion, the only sound was a loud buzz. In total, the interruption went on for almost 17 seconds before engineers at WGN were able to regain control of their broadcast tower.