Max headroom incident memes11/18/2023 Their receive pattern consists of "lobes" in directions in which they are sensitive. I don't think it's at all crazy that someone got the equipment in place, but it probably would have been someone in the broadcast industry or who spent a pretty good amount of time finding a deal on used equipment, just to have access to a suitable transmitter.īut in general, directional antennas are not magic and have substantial imperfections. That said in 1987 microwave power electronics were not as advanced as they are today and more than being large (picture like a 4U rackmount unit and pretty heavy) they were very expensive. But the TX power used on STL links is actually not very high at all, 0.5W is reasonably common for mid-range microwave links (up to ~30 miles) but in the city it may have been at more like 10W due to high noise floor. The antennae used to receive this kind of "STL" (studio-transmitter link) are directional, like horns or parabolic, and tend to be very directional both by design and due to practical considerations around microwave frequencies. I would guess "someone from the FCC said." The specific fact that the FCC concluded it was done by overriding the STL link is very hard to source but has been repeated for a long time, perhaps later I will spend more time in the newspaper archives to see if I can figure out where it first came from. It's tricky to know much about this incident with much confidence, because it's been rehashed so many times by so many writers and ultimately the original sources tend to be contemporaneous newspapers quoting unnamed FCC sources, the FCC never published the findings of their investigation. It is perhaps the most likely explanation, but no real evidence was ever found to support it, and I think the possibility of another means (such as an insider, as in other prominent incidents) still exists. Sibling comment explains the idea, but I also think a lot of articles about this tend to present the theory of someone positioned between the two sites overriding the microwave signal as more definite than it is. So it wasn't complained about much.Įventually the internet happened and people just lost interest. What helped was that not many people actually used cable for radio. Still they were lazy so often it was possible to catch an unused uplink or an incorrect timer for years. I don't think the cable company ever bothered to catch them as it all happened after hours but eventually they added time locks so the uplinks just went down after programming. It was fun! Many pirate "radio" stations too. I used to speak to them on the legal 27mc CB because I was too chicken and they'd speak back to me in glorious stereo FM. In those days broadcast transmitters still switched off when programming was finished.īecause the air was clear then there was very little power needed and thus little chance of getting caught. I know some of my friends in the 80s were able to "hack" into the cable network in my town, basically they just broadcast into the terrestrial receiver at the cable station after the real transmitter went down. I don't think we ever had such break ins in national TV in the Netherlands. He was fined $5,000 and sentenced to a year's probation.Cool story! I didn't know this happened. MacDougall, a satellite dish salesman from Ocala, Fla. The most celebrated case of video piracy occurred in April, 1986, when a pirate calling himself "Captain Midnight" intercepted the satellite transmission of Home Box Office, a cable television programmer, and broadcast a message criticizing the company for scrambling its signal to prevent non-subscribers from receiving it on privately owned satellite dishes.Ĭaptain Midnight later was identified as John R. She said she was unaware of any previous thefts of a TV station's signal. "We consider this a serious matter," said Maureen Peratino, the FCC's deputy director for public affairs. carries a criminal penalty of up to $10,000 in fines and up to one year in prison, an FCC official said. The original story line for the Max character involved a futuristic world dominated by television, where video piracy-such as what occurred Sunday night-was punishable by death. His own American prime-time television show, carried on ABC, was canceled earlier this year.
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