The Max Headroom Hack

For many of you that grew up the 1980’s Max Headroom was a household name. Max Headroom was first introduced on April 4, 1985 in the UK as the world’s first virtual TV personality. The character would become so popular that he would land such gigs as a Coke spokesman, a guest host, an actor in TV show dramas and land on the cover of Newsweek and Mad magazine at the same time. 

Max Headroom would find himself canceled in November of 1987, which is when his character would make one last big boom. On November 22, 1987 in the middle of Dan Roan’s sportscast someone hacked the TV signal. During the hack of the signal someone appeared wearing a Max Headroom mask swaying back and forth for 25 seconds. 

“First incident”

That’s not the last time that night the city of Chicago would see this strange person. Two hours later the hackers would strike again, only this time during Dr. Who. This hack would last almost two minutes and is just as creepy as the first hack only this time the hackers speak saying random things that relate to the Max Headroom character and Chicago journalists. Towards the end a second person enters the frame not showing their face and starts smacking the person dressed as Max Headrooms ass.

“Second incident”

Now almost 32 years later the case is still unsolved. The thing about the hack now is the statute of limitations is over for the crimes committed that day in 1987. I have reached out to a few of the people involved including Dan Roan (who did not comment, most likely because he sick of talking about it). I also reached out the Dr. Michael Marcus who was the lead investigator at the time, who told me he really didn’t want to talk about it anymore since he didn’t have any new information (which I completely understand). Who did this hack, especially considering how hard it would have been in 1987? If you know or might know who did it reach out to us at john@newsfromthefringe.com.