WGN Channel 9 - The Nine O'Clock News - "The 1st 'Max Headroom' Incident" (1987)

Here, shown publicly in its entirety for the first time in 30 years, is the complete broadcast of the *initial* "Max Headroom Incident" that plagued the sports report that aired within The Nine O'Clock News on WGN Channel 9 one Sunday evening in late November 1987.

The sportscaster was Dan Roan, and reporter/occasional anchor Larry Roderick as well as regular anchor Robert Jordan are also seen towards the end.

This incident occurred more than two hours before WTTW Channel 11 was interrupted by the same broadcast disruption for a longer period of time (and, unlike here, with sound), intruding onto a broadcast of Doctor Who (it can be seen here: https://youtu.be/cycVTXtm0U0 )

Sadly, this is from a tape dub ( :-\ ), but in some cases such as historically significant events like this, a dub of a tape is preferable to nothing at all (or poor re-creations hobbled together from news footage).

Here's how it went down:

Dan was recapping the Chicago Bears' 30-10 home victory over the Detroit Lions, with pertinent video clips and audio from WGN Radio 720, when about 24 seconds into this clip (at exactly 9:14pm and 25 seconds) the screen goes black for about nine seconds before a Max Headroom impersonator (who, some 30 years later, has still never been identified - publicly) is seen, with a striped moving background behind him, approximately the real Max's computer generated shifting-line background, and "sound" consisting of buzzing noise and an oscillating sound.

After 17 seconds on the air, the ersatz "Headroom" disappears to black (thanks to quick-thinking WGN engineers who switched the frequency of their STL [studio-transmitter link] to the John Hancock Building), and seven seconds after that Mr. Roan returns, wondering as much as the viewers at home what happened (and blaming it on "the computer (!) that we have running our news from time to time"), before starting again, from the very beginning, his Bears report.

This recording then scopes the rest of the Sports report out and cuts to the end of the hockey scores while Robert Jordan (with Larry Roderick seated between him and Dan) suggests half-facetiously that Dan himself may have planned the whole thing, just to show the Bears highlights twice.

My thanks to Chris Bieniek for donating this footage to The Museum of Classic Chicago Television. At the time of the incident, Chris' younger brother was working at a company called Video Monitoring Services (or VMS) in downtown Chicago, and was able to obtain a dub there. They were similar to a clipping service, but for TV news. They had multiple VCRs constantly recording news shows on all channels, and his brother's job was to watch the tapes and write down the time codes whenever a reporter mentioned the name of a company or organization, in case those people wanted to buy all the clips where they were mentioned in the news.

This aired on local Chicago TV on Sunday, November 22nd 1987 during the 9:14pm to 9:30pm timeframe.

About The Museum of Classic Chicago Television:

The Museum of Classic Chicago Television's primary mission is the preservation and display of off-air, early home videotape recordings (70s and early 80s, primarily) recorded off of any and all Chicago TV channels; footage which would likely be lost if not sought out and preserved digitally. Even though (mostly) short clips are displayed here, we preserve the entire broadcasts in our archives - the complete programs with breaks (or however much is present on the tape), for historical purposes. For information on how to help in our mission, to donate or lend tapes to be converted to DVD, and to view more of the 4,700+ (and counting) video clips available for viewing in our online archive, please visit us at:
http://www.fuzzymemories.tv/index.php?contentload=donate

Видео WGN Channel 9 - The Nine O'Clock News - "The 1st 'Max Headroom' Incident" (1987) канала The Museum of Classic Chicago Television (www.FuzzyMemories.TV)