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In November 1987, one of the [most famous television intrusions](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqgeM6rWSkw) occurred in the United States: someone interrupted two television stations in Illinois with a frightening video message. Federal agencies searched for the perpetrator, but for 30 years, they could never figure out who did it.

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With the rise of the Internet, the incident gained notoriety, becoming the basis for a scare message on forums and [YouTube](https://hackernoon.com/company/youtube) called "The Wyoming Incident."

## Double Hack

On November 22, 1987, Chicago sports commentator Dan Roan covered the best moments of an American football game between the Chicago Bears and the Detroit Lions. It was a regular newscast following the evening news on local WGN-TV, of which Roan hosted several hundred.

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> **At 9:14 p.m., the reporter disappeared from the TV screens.**

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After an interruption, Dave Rone was replaced by a man wearing a rubber mask of [Max Headroom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom), the fictional TV character who was artificial intelligence in the movie of the same name. The gray screen behind him also reminded me of the Headroom show. The unknown man was squirming and saying something, but the interference made it hard to understand him.

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 ![](https://cdn.hackernoon.com/images/-d093o7v.png)

Thirty seconds later, the WGN-TV staff was able to switch the signal to another transmitter, and Rone was back in the air. "Okay, you're probably wondering what just happened. Ha ha... me, too," he told viewers.

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At 11:15 p.m., two hours after the incident, a masked man burst onto the airwaves of another Chicago channel, WTTW, where an episode of "Doctor Who" was airing. "Max Headroom" laughed a lot, mocked the channel's expert, read Coca-Cola slogans with a can of Pepsi in his hand (Max Headroom from the show did a [Coca-Cola commercial](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzxHDqUz8Sk)), and at the end took off his pants, after which he was beaten with a flapper.

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The on-air intrusion lasted a minute and a half. The WTTW staff tried to switch the signal, but the engineer on duty was not there. Having finished his "performance," the unknown person disappeared from the screens. The "Doctor Who" series continued.

## A 30-Year Investigation

Some Chicagoans who saw a masked man humored the incident. However, the WTTW did not share its position. The day after the break-in, the agency began searching for the intruder with the help of the FBI.

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> “I would like to inform everyone involved that the maximum penalty is a $100,000 fine and one year in jail. There are those who think this is ridiculous. But this is very serious because it is a violation of federal law to invade a television station's signal” - Phil Bradford, an FCC spokesman

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The [investigators' main theory](https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1987-11-24-8703280602-story.html) was that a person or group had installed powerful equipment on the rooftops of buildings that intercepted the signal between the two communications stations and transmitted their signal. There was also a theory that the Max Headroom video had been shot in advance and aired through the engineers.

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One FCC official involved in the investigation told [Motherboard](https://www.vice.com/en/article/pgay3n/headroom-hacker) that the perpetrators did not necessarily have access to the TV stations. Radio equipment that's available on the black market could very well interfere with a channel's airwaves. The right location and technical skills would have sufficed.

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 ![Footage from the Max Headroom Show](https://cdn.hackernoon.com/images/-s3a3op2.png)

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The Central Office of the Federal Communications Commission wanted to follow up on the investigation. Still, their colleagues in Chicago saw the incident as more of a joke than a real threat. Eventually, the case stalled, though the agency found several leads, including the approximate location of the video recording.

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> **Unexpectedly, the search for "*Max Headroom*"** **continued 25 years later on Reddit.**

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[Chicago-based programmer Bowie Poag](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/eeb6e/i_believe_i_know_who_was_behind_the_max_headroom/) began his own investigation. In the 1980s, he went to anonymous meetings of local hackers, and at one of them, he met a man named “J”. He was unsociable, but he was close to a brother named “K”. Both were into hacking and electronics. On November 22, 1987, “J” allegedly approached Pogue and said: "Watch the WTTW channel tonight at 11 p.m."

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In 2012, Poag tried to contact the brothers to see if they were behind the "Max Headroom incident." However, they did not respond to emails and messages. Reddit noted that the Chicago-based programmer had no evidence, and in 2015 he admitted his own theory was wrong. Poag continued to look for a hacker but never presented a new suspect.

## Internet Myth

 ![Wyoming incident](https://cdn.hackernoon.com/images/-clc3o8q.png)

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The hacking of the airwaves in Chicago has become one of the most famous in the United States. Over time, the story grew into myths, and some facts became entrenched in "scare stories”. Chief among them is the so-called "[Wyoming incident](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WebOriginal/TheWyomingIncident).”

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The myth emerged in the winter of 2007, during the early years of YouTube. First, there was a report on a Snopes forum about hackers invading the TV airwaves of a channel in Wyoming, Nebraska. There was alleged interference during the newscast, and then a splash page with phrases and "emotions" people were showing.

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Snopes stated that watching the video in Wyoming resulted in vomiting, hallucinations, insomnia, and headaches. Residents allegedly went to hospitals complaining of gratuitous fear. The forum claimed that a police investigation revealed the use of special low frequencies in the break-in that drove people insane.

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A week after the recording was published, the first version of the alleged [hacking video appeared on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K21YdhuxjlM), and it later expanded into a full-fledged news release video.

## Conclusion

In fact, no one was injured in the incident. In two minutes of airtime on two channels in Chicago, the unidentified man did not hurt anyone but became one of the most notorious TV hacks who were never caught.

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I also recommend you read:

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* __[The 7 Craziest Financial Stories of 2021: Investing in Nothing](https://hackernoon.com/the-7-craziest-financial-stories-of-2021-investing-in-nothing)__
* __[The 19th-Century Dot-Com Bubble: How a Scotsman Sold a Fake Country](https://hackernoon.com/the-19th-century-dot-com-bubble-how-a-scotsman-sold-a-fake-country)__
* __[How Russian Games Propagated the War](https://hackernoon.com/how-russian-games-propagated-the-war)__
* __[How to Protect Against Attacks Using a Quantum Computer](https://hackernoon.com/how-to-protect-against-attacks-using-a-quantum-computer)__
* [The Crazy Rise of Crazy Eddie: How an Electronics Store in the 80s Tricked Investors](https://hackernoon.com/the-crazy-rise-of-crazy-eddie-how-an-electronics-store-in-the-80s-tricked-investors)

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