Job Detail

The Max Headroom Hijacker Has Never Been Caught — And the New Evidence Suggests Whoever Did It Had Access That Should Have Been Impossible On the night of November 22, 1987, at 9:14 PM, someone interrupted a live broadcast on WGN-TV in Chicago during the sports segment. For 28 seconds, viewers watched a masked figure in a Max Headroom costume — the pixelated AI character from British television — gyrate against a rotating corrugated metal background, buzzing with distorted electronic noise. Before engineers could override the feed, the signal dropped. Two hours later, the same hijacker broke into WTTW Channel 11 during an episode of Doctor Who, broadcasting for 90 seconds. The figure spoke garbled fragments, held up a can of Pepsi, was spanked with a flyswatter by an off-screen accomplice...