Endless Thread - Encore: To the Max (Headroom)

Episode Date: January 6, 2022

On November 22nd, 1987, two TV stations in Chicago had their broadcast signals hijacked by someone wearing a Max Headroom mask. In the years since, Redditors have played an integral role in getting to the bottom of this case. Who dunnit? Why? How? We dig into the story.

Support for endless thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. Ben, you know what we forgot to do last week? Uh-oh. What? Give our New Year's resolutions for endless thread. What's yours? Oh, God. Um, I think mine is play more music. I like playing music. And I have all these synthesizers gathering dust. I'm just surrounded by dusty synthesizers. So I got a dust. them off this year. Okay.

So I think that's mine. What's yours? Well, I have two. My first one is that I think we should come back next week with our first new episode of 2022. Hell yeah. And I want more mysteries. The weirder, the better.

I love a weird mystery. I love that. I love that for you. Mm-hmm. Thank you. If anyone's going to bring that weird mystery vibe, it's you. So I'm ready to go on those. I'm ready to go on those magical mystery tours with you.

Wonderful. And we have a mystery today for folks. It's an oldie and weirdie. It's from the 2019 ET Archives. And it was so much fun to make. And it's just as fun to listen back to. So get weird with us for the next half hour or so. And we'll be back next week with a new episode.

All right. Here's the weird mystery. Produced by the I-Lab at WBUR, Boston. Amory, do you remember the year 1987? No, no, Ben, I do not. I was not alive. Gotcha. You win in the contest of who is older.

Congratulations. Thank you very much. So we need to get a feel for the year 1987. Yeah, specifically the night of November 22, 1987 in Chicago, where during primetime television hours, something truly weird happened, a mysterious occurrence that's never been explained. If you were in Chicago and flipping through TV channels in 1987, you would find a range of stuff. On Superior Court. You can you start down to zip my jeans. Nutricious foods like Campbell's Soup can help keep your resistance up. Fear mongering from Court TV and Campbell's Soup. Maybe some of

those lovable, hella creepy, Claymation California raisins. Specifically on the night of Sunday, November 22nd, 1987, a one-season show called Buck James, the doctor who wears scrubs and cowboy boots. I don't give a damn. All it takes is what I don't give a damn about. Dennis Weaver is Buck James Sunday on ABC. Over on PBS, you had some serious masterpiece theater nerdery happening. Gotta love that public media, baby. But if you were one of the thousands of Chicago residents watching WGN Channel 9's 9 o'clock news,

you are about to hear and see something really unusual. It happened during the sports cast. The announcer was talking about the Chicago Bears game. Then they scored again at the Lions 31. Wayne Larravee called it like this on WGN Radio. Everything's going along normally. And then right in the middle of the announcer's description of the game while the football newsreel played.

There's then the defense, which hadn't put up a sack in 12 quarters, finally did. The screen goes black for a long. time. Suddenly, there's this weird, twisted scene that pops up on the television. It's someone in a mask, a big, oversized head with sunglasses, square chin, white teeth, blonde, slicked back hair. This person is wearing a suit and tie. And behind them, there's a corrugated piece of metal, maybe, twirling in this hypnotic way. The character jerks and shudders and seems to laugh. And then the scene cuts out again, and the screen goes black.

When the sportscaster comes back on, he is bewildered. Well, if you're wondering what's happened, so am I. Actually, the computer that we have running our news from time to time took off and went wild. So what we're going to do is start over from the top of the bears and tell you once again about the 30 to 10 victory they had over to Troy today. It was not a computer glitch. It was a hostile takeover. something called a broadcast signal intrusion.

In this case, people hijacked the airwaves of a major American television station, and it wasn't over. That was just the first of two signal intrusions that night. 32 years ago to the day that we are publishing this episode. It was weird, it was bold, federal investigators were called, there were news reports, it was a fiasco. And it still has never been solved. And, spoiler, this is not one we have solved either.

Yet. No one has. And because it's this intersection of hacker culture, subversive art, technology, and real life, this story still resonates with people even after three decades. Maybe you can help us find some answers? Maybe. I'm Ben Brock Johnson. I'm Amory Siebertson.

And you're listening to you're listening to... to endless threat. The show featuring stories found in the vast ecosystem of online communities called Reddit. We're coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR station. Today's episode, To the Max. Headroom. The Max Headroom's string story. So, sit back. Relax and enjoy. So this thing that happened, this broadcast intrusion, it really happened twice. And the second time, two hours later, a little after 11 p.m. It was even weirder. Which, appropriate, because it happens during the BBC science fiction show Doctor Who.

Right in the middle of the PBS affiliate station WTTW's broadcast of the episode Horror of Fang Rock. Sometimes and talk to the seals, you know, just to get a change from Ruben and Ben. And it starts out the same way. The screen switches to someone in a strange mask, lunging at the camera, while a piece of corrugated metal spins behind them. I'll get you a hot drink miss. But then the person in the mask starts talking.

And heads up, they're almost impossible to understand. People who have studied this video for hours say that the first part of this bit says, among other things, that does it. He's a frickin' nerd. That's right, I think I'm better than Chuck Swirsky, freaking liberal. Is he a freaking liberal? Well, I mean, that depends on who you talk to. I mean. Meet Chuck Sworsky, the one person whose name gets yelled out

by the masked people hijacking television broadcasts in Chicago on November 22, 1987. Today, Chuck is the play-by-play radio announcer for the Chicago Bulls. Back in 1987, his job was also in sports. Well, I was sports director at WGN radio in Chicago, doing college basketball for DePaul University. The Cubs Radio Network, Bears Radio Network, Northwestern Football, you know, and the city, obviously, the sports passion is very, very strong. Do you remember anything else about that day? I can't even tell you, in all candor, what the weather was lagged.

November 22nd, 1987. I'm sure because it's Chicago, it was cold, and it either snowed or it was gray, and it was, you know, maybe sleep like we're experiencing now. I thought it was just a normal Sunday, a normal Bear Sunday, until, you know, about 9 to 10 o'clock. And then my world rocked big time. Chuck says he doesn't usually take his work home with him. So as an employee of WGN, he wasn't watching his company. Japanese TV station when, during the 9 o'clock news, the broadcast was hijacked. And then all of a sudden I started getting calls.

Like a lot of calls. I mean, a ridiculous amount of calls. Hey, did you just hear or did you see? What are you talking about? Max Headroom. Yeah, what about Max Headroom? Well, I mean, he mentioned you. And I said, what did he say?

He said, you were a freaking liberal. I went, what? Come on. I thought it was a practical joke. The person who was taking over the TV broadcast was wearing a Max Headroom mask. Amory, you remember Max Headroom, yeah? Still not born yet, Ben. But at the time, Chuck didn't know him all that well either. I really didn't understand this whole Max Headroom phenomenon. I mean, I really couldn't relate to him. I had no connection. So Max Headroom was this fictional character described by his creators as an artificial intelligence.

He was played by a real person in a ton of makeup to make him look sort of computer-generated. And he also sounded computer-generated. His voice would, like, pitch shift and stutter randomly. This is Max Headroom. He looked like a news program talking head that floated in this computer-generated cube. And Max was a satire, created to poke fun at the stereotypical. cocky, western white male newscaster. Here's tech writer and editor Alex Pasternak

on the super meta plot that was created around Max Headroom, the character. Basically, Max was a journalist working at a television station owned by a large corporation. And he had discovered some dark secret about the corporation and was in the process of reporting on it

for his employer owned by this corporation. when he is assassinated. And his brain is preserved by his hacker friend. The brain is uploaded to the network. And Max Headroom became this digital character who would drop into television broadcasts. Okay, this is the...

Max Headroom Show, and I'm cocky swagger. Max Headroom. And it's great to have you all back with me. me again. I'm sorry. There's a guy keeps moving around over there. All right, all right. Well, I wish you'd just damn well keep still, for God's sake. Because I'm trying to do a show here. In his original inception in the UK in 1984, Max was pretty alternative. His character was that of a hacked-together

robotic artificial intelligence, one that existed to subvert the mainstream. Alex Pasternak says both Max and the incident itself connected to this rise of hacker culture. Hackers were starting to gain notoriety as criminals they were being prosecuted by the government, but they had also been born in this world of hobbyists and pranksters. And Max, I think, embodied the hacker who's a protester and who has a certain agenda and is fighting a good cause. And that's part of what makes this whole thing even more cyberpunk when the signal intrusion has happened.

Without going too deep into the Max Headroom origin story, this was a bizarre example of life imitating art, a hacker dropping into a real TV broadcast, posing as a character who was a fictional hacker himself. Max Headroom was also this character that imagined and made fun of a dystopian future where corrupt mega-corporporporated, used computers to replace journalists. It really is time for me to look for a new job. Well, that was over 30 years ago. It still hasn't happened, Amory, so I think we're safe for now. Pugh.

Point is, this weird, stuttering virtual newscaster poked fun at newscasters and normies. And no offense to Chuck or other sportscasters here. But Chuck was, and maybe is, a bit of a normie? There wasn't anyone in the circle of friends of mine. that said, hey, Max Headroom. And so when this occurred, it completely caught me off guard. I was shocked. Did you ever fear for your safety?

Honestly, I did. I had a couple of friends tell me, you know, Swersk, that's my nickname. You know, you better seek protection. Whoever did this had to be pretty smart and sharp to do what he did. but why he signaled out me, I have no idea. Whether or not Swersk understood the point of Max Headroom, his world really was flipped upside down. After that clip played, I received calls from radio television stations, not only in Chicago, but across the United States. And once it reached the Associated Press and United Press International, the two wire services at the time,

then the whole thing started to mushroom. Last night, someone broke into regular programming here on Channel 9. The pirates interrupted WGM and WTTW programming with a show of their own. Even in a medium that is no stranger to bizarre moments, these were truly bizarre. So what did you think about the whole thing? Very, very funny. Funny to a kid, maybe, because the second intrusion got real weird. After calling out Chuck Swirsky, the person in the Max Headroom mask,

who appeared to be a man, also pulled down his pants, revealing his bare ass. And then a woman showed up, also in a mask, to spank him repeatedly with a fly swatter. The person starts screaming what sounds like, oh, oh, do it. This was not funny to Chuck Swirsky, because that combined with the person in the video calling him out specifically for being a, quote, frickin'n' liberal, led to some questions he wasn't really prepared to answer. People started asking me, well, so the upcoming election, who are you taking in 1988? You know, what are your views on this, this, and this? You know, I just want to be a guy, you know, just a guy on the street. Whatever his feelings about politics,

Chuck had been thrust into the spotlight in a broadcast signal hack, one of a short list of similar takeovers that seemed to be growing in number in the mid-1980s, looked at by some as a new form of terrorism, one that even with its silliness and spanking, was about to get very serious. The incidents are now under investigation by the FCC and the FBI. FCC spokesperson Phil Bradford went on TV at the time and said this. It is very serious, and we'd like to inform anybody who's involved in this type of thing that it is serious and that we will take every step that we can to, find out who is doing it. And once we have determined that, we will make sure that the full

extent of the law is carried out. The maximum penalty, a $100,000 fine, and prison time. More on the FCC's investigation and questions about whether they did take every step they could to find the perpetrators in a minute. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science. neuroscience, chemistry. But, but we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing.

Or politics. Country music. Hockey. Sex. Of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity

to get you the answers. And hopefully make you see the world anew. Radio Lab. Adventures on the Edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcast. There is something powerful about the sound of the human voice, Beautifully produced audio has the unique power to connect and inspire.

Tell your organization's story with a custom podcast from CitySpace Productions, the Creative Studio from WBUR's Business Partnerships team. Become a thought leader. Recruit new talent. Reach new audiences. Whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. So, when some masked marauders took over 90 seconds,

of TV time in the major market of Chicago in 1987, it looked and felt more than anything like a prank, at least to some observers. But to other people, it was a huge deal. Broadcast intrusions aren't new, but doing it with a purpose, historically, has had political implications. In 1966, a radio broadcast intrusion in a Soviet Union city claimed nuclear war had broken out with the United States. In 1977, a UK television station delivered a message supposedly from outer space about a disaster that would impact the human race. In 1986, HBO was in the process of changing its delivery technology. People used to be able to get home box office for free by putting up a satellite dish.

But HBO was going to make it so that everyone had to. to pay a fee to get that stuff, which angered a guy named John McDougal, whose satellite dish business relied on the old way. McDougal hacked the delivery system and put up a message for viewers that said, Good evening, HBO from Captain Midnight. 1295 a month, no way. Showtime, movie channel, beware. McDougal got turned in by a guy who overheard him bragging about his stunt. A year later, thousands of Randy viewers headed to the Playboy Satellite Network, only to be met with a message from the Bible. Specifically, the books of Exodus and Matthew. Thus saith the Lord thy God.

Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Years later, an uplink engineer employed by the Christian Broadcasting Network would be charged with the crime of trying to interrupt TV smut. with religious morals. All of these intrusions led to a feeling that there was an outbreak of hostile broadcast takeovers.

But the Max Headroom incident was different because it was a successful interruption that included real video content, not just text overlays. It was a daring move. Which we learned in part

from one of the only deep dive pieces of journalism produced about this incident from a reporter named Chris. Hello, my name is Chris Niddle. I'm a documentary producer, journalist, writer. Chris is usually doing documentary work about pretty heavy stuff. Dog fighting, gun running, drug addiction.

Max's headroom was a little outside of his usual wheelhouse. But when he stumbled upon YouTube videos of the broadcast interruption at two in the morning one night in 2012, he became obsessed. I was instantly sort of captured by the imagery and the sounds and sort of spooked and kind of bewildered with it. Chris set out to do an investigative piece. One of the areas he focused on was the tech needed to pull off a stunt like this. In part because once you understand the tools,

you start to narrow the list of suspects. And what you need, simply put, is to become a broadcaster yourself. This is what investigators focused on too. Once the FCC got involved, there were two. offices tackling the intrusion, the office in Washington, D.C., and the regional office in Chicago. Chris talked to a guy named Michael Marcus, an investigator on the case from the D.C. office. And Marcus had a lot to say on the topic, including the fact that when he started trying to figure out who was behind the intrusion, he ran into some problems.

According to him, his hands were tied behind his back. He said that he did have what he thought was a credible idea of where they broadcasted their transmission, where they sent their signal out. But someone who he would not name specifically, who he worked with, I think his boss, did not want him to go and pursue that, did not want him knocking on doors. Why? Why not knock on doors? That I don't know. Chris did have a theory, though, one that connected to this idea that if you follow the tech, you can find your broadcast intrusion perps. WGN, the first station that had its airwaves hacked, might have had some disgruntled employees.

One area I didn't explore fully was there was a lot of layoffs in the months prior to the incident. To me, I feel like it's most likely someone who is a form. former broadcast employee in whatever capacity, but there's no hard evidence out there. Part of the reason for a lack of evidence might be this tension that apparently existed between the FCC's national and regional offices. Basically local cops versus national cops. Big footing stuff. And apparently, this may have influenced the effectiveness of the headroom investigation. Because even when the FCC office in D.C. got a tithe.

about a company where the hackers may have pre-taped the video, the Chicago people refused to go and question them. We asked a former FCC investigator about this. His name is Jim Higgins, and he worked on all of the 1980s broadcast intrusions. Did that contribute to the challenges with the case? Yeah, well, I'm not sure here in D.C. were, you know, had some ideas about how this should be done,

and the Chicago guys, you know, had some ideas. but they were the ones on the front line. So they took some advice, but they didn't take, I think, all of the advice. I wasn't so involved in that piece. What about the idea that if you follow the technology involved, you'll find the perpetrators? If your power is quite a bit stronger than the desired signal, then you'll override the desired signal, and your signal will go out instead. And we discussed, you know, what kind of equipment

probably would have taken to do that. So we assumed somebody who had access to the means, but we're not sure of the motive. People have mentioned this idea that at least at one of the stations, there had recently been some layoffs and the suggestion that there may have been a motive therein. That's actually, now that you've mentioned that, that might have been something that I remember now hearing from our Chicago guys.

So even though the FCC's investigation never discovered the identity of the perpetrators, the evidence was pointing towards an inside job. And whoever was behind it, this was definitely a big deal at the time. Laws were being changed in the 1980s to make intrusions like this a felony. There were growing concerns about terrorism and extremism more generally. And at the time, broadcast intrusions felt like they could become a part of that. Not just hackers taking the piss out of the mainstream, more serious issues. There is not a lot of hard evidence anywhere here, which is why it's never been solved.

It's also why this story continues to come back to life periodically. It captures the minds of people who want answers, including people on Reddit. And you will not be shocked to learn that Reddit did move the ball forward a bit, in part by focusing on the bizarre contents of the video itself, which includes a parody of a Coke commercial with the perpetrator throwing a Pepsi can. Also a rendition of the theme song for the animated show Clutch Cargo. And then there's the direct jab at WGN,

which, by the way, stands for World's Greatest Newspaper. And this moment, when the Max Headroom hacker pulled up. out a glove and says, we think, my brother is wearing the other one, but it's dirty. And that brings us to one of the theories about the hack that has popped up over the years, that it was pulled off by these two brothers, known only to the public as J and K. This theory was introduced on Reddit by a guy named Bowie Pogue. And Chris Niddle, the reporter, says this post is a big part of what has kept the story going decades after it happened.

To me, his story on Reddit just sort of kind of supercharged the mystery, you know, and kind of inspired people to go down their own rabbit holes. Bowie, this Redditor, eventually updated his Reddit post, saying that he no longer considered Jay and Kay the two brothers, suspects. This was due to new evidence he found in his own investigative. New evidence he won't share publicly. He declined to record an interview with us, but he did answer a few of our questions via email. And so did his crime-solving partner, this guy named Rick Klein.

Rick is the chief curator of an online museum of classic Chicago television, and he has a copy of the Max Headroom Broadcast Intrusion, the highest-quality copy he claims. It was actually Chris's reporting that brought Rick and Bowie together. They both grew up in Chicago and witnessed the hack live when they were 13 years old. And they were both inspired by this hacker, prankster, subculture. They have since joined forces in an amateur investigation of the incident. They set up a tip line.

They interviewed people who were around at the time. They did their own analysis of the video. But still... Still, no answer. Though they are the keepers of some secrets, things they say they just won. won't go into, like who specifically they've spoken to and who they think the Max Headroom hackers were. And if right now you are calling bullshit, like this all feels a little suspicious, you

are not alone. A lot of this story feels suspicious, which made us suspicious. So we asked Rick and Bowie if they were involved. They swore up and down they were not. Fine. Next stop on the old suspicion train? How about Chuck Swirsky, the sportscaster? You didn't do it, right?

Absolutely not. I don't even... Honestly, it takes me assistance to move pictures to a photo album on my computer. I mean, seriously, I'm shocked that it hasn't been solved. Okay, what about Chris, who wrote thousands of words on this story? As a reporter who got interested decades after the thing happened, And it's pretty safe to say he was not directly involved. But what is his take on who was responsible?

When you started reporting on this, did you set out to solve it? I don't know the answer to that. Because I don't know if I want it to be solved. Really? I don't know. What? Why not? You know, sometimes when you meet your heroes, you're disappointed, right? Are they your heroes?

You know, I wouldn't rank them as my heroes. But, you know, it's folklore. It's a myth. You know, it's an urban legend. It's culture jamming. You know, so it's sometimes I think that things like this are better left unsolved. Wow, this feels like a direct challenge. I know.

Mission accepted. Mission failed. So far. The statute of limitations is long past. So it's a little odd that the perpetrators haven't come forward for bragging rights at the very least. But it is possible that the legend of the Max Headroom signal intrusion is more important and more powerful without an unmasking. Maybe it's more useful as a reminder to hackers that culture jamming is possible. Bursting into the nightly news into everyone's favorite program late at night.

and just invade their brain and turn their night upside down for just a brief moment. You know, culture jamming. Even though it's just basically like gibberish, there's no clear message that we're supposed to take away from it. How do you know it's gibberish? Well, that's true.

I mean, for all we know, it's all, it appears to be gibberish, but it could be a coded message. And the myth continues, as well as the mystery. I can say, without a doubt, the individuals involved are tight-lipped. And they must have some sort of code that they decided to live by. We got to crack the pack, Damoree. Or do we?

Chris, you've been no help. Thank you very much. Who knows what could be unleashed? Chris feels like, in a way, this story is an aspirational legend for hackers of the day. and hackers now. It's a dare. A way to say, see what you can do? You can stop people in the middle of the rat race. Make the audience look up from their dead-end jobs, snap out of their TV-watching zombie state. You can culture jam. Editor Alex Pasternak points out that there's some irony here in the idea of Max Headroom being part of culture jamming. By 1987, Max Headroom, the brand,

had gone through his own transformation from a subversive cyber-pocket. movie character to a music video jockey with his own TV show in the U.S. By that point, he had become a television pitchman. He was selling Coca-Cola, and there were these really funny ads. Catch it if he can, can. Catch the wave. Coke. I think I saw him being interviewed on Letterman a lot because my parents watched Letterman.

I tell you what, Max, could you describe yourself for us? Just tell the folks a little bit about what you are, what you do. I suppose I see myself as witty. Witty. Urbane. Yeah. Highly talented. Talented.

Talented. Hugely successful and a keen sense of style. Plus, of course, my own special brand of modest. The signal intruders may not have had enough time to say everything they wanted to. But I think my sense is that they were performing. They were doing something that was. that was meant to be in some ways a work of art. And in effect, a protest of the corporate media environment.

You know, I think that there's something poetic about that. There's a certain delectability in the mystery of all of it. In the decades since the incident, the mainstream has moved on, forgotten about Max Headroom. Coca-Cola has new pitch people, the Max TV show is long gone, but the subversives remember. Headroom echoes in the masked activist group Anonymous in the modern reimagininges of Guy Fox

in the graphic novel V for Vendetta. So in a way, the Chicago intrusion was a more pure and lasting version of Max Headroom, maybe precisely because the perpetrators have never been caught. Amory, what do you think the equivalent of this incident in 2019 or 2020 is? Like, is it Jack Dorsey getting his Twitter feed hacked?

Is it some crazy, Netflix's like takeover move that we haven't seen yet? What is it? Maybe it's this. Out of this story as search is underway for a hacker who caused panic and confusion in Dallas by triggering all of the city's emergency sirens at the same time. Hey, I bet Chuck Swirsky is just glad all those sirens weren't singing his name. You wish they were singing your name, don't you, Ben? I mean, don't you? I'm interested. I'm interested to hear that. You better get a lot better at computers. on it. It's been a great show.

We're sorry that it's through. Goodbye is such a sad war. So let's just say, Adieu. Chris and Alex worked on a very in-depth piece about the Max Headroom incident for Vice. You can find a link to that at our website, wbUR.org slash endless thread. Also, if you want to read more in-depth answers from Bowie and Rick, we'll post those to our new subreddit.

Yes, we have one of those now. It is R slash endless thread, or you can go to endlessthread.org.com. And a big shout out to all the former WGN and WTTW broadcast engineers who were there when the Max Headroom hack happened. Thank you for reaching out to us while we were producing this piece. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR, Boston's NPR station, in partnership with Reddit. Josh Swartz is our producer, and no, he did not live through the 80s and wants no part of your 80s. Nostalgia. Iris Adler is our executive producer who thinks the Max Headroom hack must have given viewers a...

Confusing perspective. Mix and sound designed by Paul Vicus, a long-lost brother to the prankster hackers of the 80s. He's all like, My people need me! Michael Pope is our advisor at Reddit who thinks Max Headroom perfectly encapsulates retrofuturism. More editing help from WBUR managing producer, Kat Brewer, extra production assistance from James Lindberg. Our intern is Magdeaella Mata.

Maggie's fine. For reactions to this episode or ideas for future episodes, hit us up on Reddit. We are Endless underscore Thread or email us at endless thread at WBUR.org. My co-host and producer and Max Headroom is Amory Severson. I'm senior producer and co-host Ben Brock Johnson. I'll let myself happen.