The Max Headroom TV Hijack

One of the highest profile broadcast intrusions still remains unsolved, so Brian and Jason go over the known details of the case.
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Additional Information
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Source footage listed below:

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This episode was made with the help of:

[MarkBowenPiano]

WarGames should get a special mention in the fact that after that movie aired hacking went up massively and systems had to start shipping with a default password instead of what they had previously shipped with as people were getting into systems very easily.

[KevCoLabs]

As a Chicago kid who grew up in the 1980s/1990s, this event has always captivated me. I know a guy who claims to know the guy who did it (just like every other person from Chicago).

Also - I really miss the rapport and fun vibe between Brian and Jason. I'm loving these throwback Brian+Jason videos. I'm always hoping it's a new Brian+Jason vid, but I'm happy with the reruns, too.

my piles.

[NuclearSpring]

I mean, I guess this is better than just taking a random 30s from the video and making it a "short".

[IanJones]

It's really, really funny how things work out - I just, last week, heard about the Max Headroom incident - for this to show up now... that's so weird!

[workingguy-OU]

Good coverage. This just came up on a "Craziest Things on Live TV" youtube voice-over of Reddit posts, and I don't recall if I saw anything about it back in the day.

[ashley]

This is crazy bc my dad was literally just talking to my siblings and I about 5 minutes ago and how this happened when he was 10 and you guys uploaded this YESTERDAY!?🤯🤯

[goofy-goober-prime]

As a punk kid back then, that hack was absolutely legendary.

[Finnegan]

I saw this live on WTTW which is a PBS station. Both WGN and WTTW studios are only a couple of miles apart. So logistically it can be done i guess. in that short time frame. Wild thing is nobody was ever charged

[MarkBowenPiano]

The voice effect is definitely a voice changer they're using. I remember there used to be a microphone back in the 80s that looked more or less like a normal microphone handle but had a quite large circle on top with buttons on to change the amount of pitch change. It sounded exactly like that as the chips back then for doing that sort of thing were very much in their infancy and the quality that came out was exceptionally poor.

[MarkBowenPiano]

If I'm remembering correctly, didn't Max Headroom originate here in the UK and this 'hack' was a couple of years later in the US?
I believe he (Max Headroom) was a British invention / idea though wasn't it?

[Vilq]

I'm here for the "Bring back Jason" movement :D

[kratos]

Watch really intently and then scream like something amazing happened lol

[ChrisBigBad]

bwaaahahaha. BSG! LoL yeah, that was strange, but it threw me off track and sent me bawling for 2 hours.