It lasted ninety seconds. That was enough.
On November 22, 1987 — the anniversary of the Kennedy assassination — someone hijacked the broadcast signal of WGN-TV in Chicago during the evening news. For about thirty seconds, the anchor's face was replaced by a figure wearing a Max Headroom mask, a rotating corrugated metal background, and no audio. Then the hijack cut out.
Two hours later, it happened again. This time on WTTW, the city's PBS affiliate, during Doctor Who. This version lasted longer. And this time, there was audio.
What viewers heard was bizarre. The masked figure waved a glove, hummed, rambled fragments of sentences. Someone off-camera struck them with a flyswatter. The figure moaned. Then it was over.
The FCC investigated. The FBI investigated. Neither agency ever identified who did it.
The technical execution required knowledge that was not casual. The hijackers used a signal transmitter powerful enough to override the station's broadcast from somewhere in the Chicago metro area. Equipment worth thousands of dollars. Technical expertise. A location with line-of-sight to the broadcast tower.
What investigators confirmed: the hijacking was real, broadcast over the air to everyone watching those channels that night. The FCC investigation found no suspects. The equipment was never recovered. No one ever claimed credit.
What remained contested: whether one or multiple people were involved. The off-screen flyswatter suggests at least two. Whether the event was planned for that specific date was never established.
The internet eventually adopted the Max Headroom hijacking as one of its earliest mysteries. Amateur signal engineers mapped the likely broadcast location to a few square miles of Chicago's north side. Thousands of hours of forum analysis. No names.
If the hijackers are still alive, they have kept the secret for nearly four decades.