The majority of the message comes across as rubbish, but it all sounds like insider talk to me, little jokes that only employees of the station would understand. I think that after being discovered and thwarted in his attempt to take over his original target WGN the pirate attatcked WTTW as a last resort, the introduction to his video message would have made much more sense if it had have been broadcast as intended in the middle of a sports programme. I cant really see that the pirate took control of 5 seperate transmitter locations using a DIY microwave transmitter, I think this was done internally by a disgruntled employee.
This is an amazing incident made even more so by the fact that it is captured on tape! Whoever did this had to have had some quite advanced knowledge and equipment, but in my opinion all the evidence points to a disgruntled TV-Station employee. This was something that we noticed towards the end of the process, it was so subtle it was almost missed! After the pirate says the line 'Oh my piles' what at first appeared to be interference and distortion, is actually a sound effect of somebody crapping their pants! This makes the next line ' just laid a giant masterpiece for all the greatest worlds newspaper nerds' make even more sense.Īnother discovery we made after enhancing and filtering the audio is that his female assistant actually speaks towards the end of the video. The WGN station that was originaly attacked is short for Worlds Greatest Newspaper, could the pirate be an ex WGN technical employee?Ī few things we noticed that nobody else seems to have picked up on. I just laid a giant masterpiece for all the greatest world's newspaper nerds
MAX HEADROOM MUSIC VIDEO SERIES
The theme tune the pirate hums during the broadcast is to the american animated TV series Clutch Cargo The Max Headroom charcter was advertising for coca-cola at the time and we've dug up one of these adverts with the slogan in below Oh, I just laid a giant masterpiece for all the greatest world's newspaper nerdsĬhuck was a sports broadcaster with WGN -TV at the time of the incidentĬatch The Wave was the slogan being used at the time by Coca Cola. (Appears to be a sound effect of somebody crapping their pants) I have included this translation and explanation for some of what is said in the tape, any corrections or suggestions are more then welcome, just leave a comment….
We have cleaned the audio up as much as possible in this version of the video, the original source we took ours from is if you want to compare it to the original This time the signal had audio and viewers were witness to a unintelligble rant from the 'fake' Max Headroom character, a video of this interuption can be seen below The second of these incidents occured during the evening broadcast of Dr Who on WTTW.The signal had no audio, but the video was of someone in a Max Headroom mask gesturing at the camera. During the sports section of the 9pm news broadcast on Americas WGN network, an unauthorised signal over powered the stations transmitters and was broadcast for over a minute.Some of you may be familiar with this one but for those that aren't, here's a quick rundown of the events of Sunday November 22nd 1987