On November 22, 1987, someone in a rubber Max Headroom mask seized two Chicago TV stations two hours apart, ranted in front of a swaying sheet of metal, took a flyswatter to the backside, and vanished. Nearly 40 years and one FBI hunt later, we still don't know who did it — and after the digital switchover, the crime became technically impossible to repeat.
The actual pirate broadcast that interrupted WTTW's rerun of Doctor Who. Every surviving frame exists only because a suburban fan happened to be taping the episode that night.
The full timeline: a 17-second breach of WGN's 9 p.m. sportscast, then a longer, sustained takeover of WTTW's unmanned transmitter two hours later.
A tight, factual recap of exactly how the intrusion unfolded across the two broadcasts and why engineers could stop one but not the other.
A deep, image-rich write-up of the hijack, the technical feat it required, and the strange details hidden in those ninety seconds of babble and hum.
A breakdown of the broadcast engineering involved: overpowering a station's microwave link to a transmitter was no amateur trick.
Joe Scott revisits the case nearly four decades on — the suspects, the theories, and why the FCC and FBI came up empty.
A cold-case treatment of the hijack: the leading theories, the Reddit-era amateur sleuthing, and why the identity of the man in the mask may stay buried forever.