Great Moments in Broadcast Signal Intrusion

Broadcast Signal Intrusion is a term given to the act of hijacking broadcast signals of radio and television stations. Hijacking incidents have involved local TV and radio stations as well as cable and national networks.


Yesterday Montana TV station KRTV reported that someone hacked into their Emergency Broadcast System and broadcast of an impending emergency in several Montana counties. According to Great Falls Tribune, regular programming was interrupted with a voice-over that warned that bodies were rising from their graves and attacking humans (video 1, 2).

“Do not attempt to approach or apprehend these bodies as they are extremely dangerous…”

This is not the first time a Broadcast Signal Intrusion has happened. Here are some of my favorites:



The so-called 'Max Headroom Pirate Incident' from 1987. The first incident occurred during the sports segment of the WGN 9:00 p.m. news broadcast; During the sports section of the 9pm news broadcast on Americas WGN network, an unauthorised signal over powered the sations transmitters and was broadcast for over a minute. The signal had no audio, but the video was of someone in a Max Headroom mask gesturing at the camera.

The second of these incidents occured during the evening broadcast of Dr Who on WTTW. This time the signal had audio and viewers were witness to a unintelligble rant from the 'fake' Max Headroom character.


East Enders interrupted by techno music and geometric shapes.



In May 2012 viewers of UK terrestrial TV were suddenly faced with this alarming yet intriguing break in normal transmission. The perpetrators are still being hunted by OfCom for a violation of UK broadcasting law. If caught, the individuals could face hefty fines or even imprisonment. Quite how they managed to break into the network is still unknown. OfCom and broadcast industry experts are keeping a tight lid on how it may have happened. The only information released is that the broadcast may have been inserted somewhere in the North of England, possibly near the Emley Moor or Winter Hill Transmitter sites



On a late-December evening in 1989, a Los Angeles television station was victim of a broadcast signal takeover.

A broadcast of the Reagan/Bush gavel passing was interrupted by a man wearing a tin foil mask. The crazed person uttered mostly gibberish and becomes flustered when a piece of his "set" falls apart. 30-seconds later, the program returned to normal.



This broadcast of the popular PBS cooking show, "The Frugal Gourmet," was interrupted by a video pirate.



Deep into the night during an HBO broadcast of The Falcon and the Snowman in April 1986, subscribers were startled to see the start of the action interrupted by a four-and-a-half-minute transmission from a certain “Captain Midnight.” Over a test pattern, the message from Captain Midnight ran as follows:

GOODEVENING HBO
FROM CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT
$12.95/MONTH ?
NO WAY !
[SHOWTIME/MOVIE CHANNEL BEWARE!]

Captain Midnight turned out to be a John MacDougall, an engineer at a satellite transmission facility in Ocala, Florida. MacDougall’s hacker attack was motivated by frustration at HBO, who he felt was overcharging satellite customers and hurting his satellite dish business. MacDougall was sentenced to one year’s probation and a $5,000 fine.

You can read more about the Max Headroom broadcast intrusion here.

Keep watching the skies.

Good Copy Bad Copy on SVT2 Tonight

Tonight on SVT2 (Swedish National Television Channel 2) the document Good Copy Bad Copy will be shown. Of course if you have the net bandwidth you have probably already seen it (look above). If none of the previous means anything to you, then watch the film Good Copy Bad Copy tonight on SVT2 at 20:00:

Good Copy Bad Copy is a documentary about copyright and culture in the context of Internet, directed by Andreas Johnsen, Ralf Christensen, and Henrik Moltke. It features interviews with many people with various perspectives on copyright, including copyright lawyers, music producers and controversial music artists such as Girl Talk and Danger Mouse. The interviews with artists reveal an emerging understanding of digital works and the obstacle to their authoring copyright presents.

Originally created for the Danish National Broadcasting Television network, the film was eventually released for free on the internet. It first appeared on The Pirate Bay and then it was officially released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license on the Blip.tv video sharing site. (wikipedia)

Free TV and the Monkees

At the moment the Swedish public television station SVT is running an advertising campaign about how it is politically and economically independent and therefore 'Free'. I am not sure it is as simple as that (i.e. the people pay therefore we can say anything), but I agree there is an integrity to the public broadcaster in Sweden that is important. However, I have encountered similar levels of 'Independence' in other state run media services in other countries that while they do not favor individual concerns such as business' they do follow national agendas and conform to concepts of 'common sense'- which leads me to my next topic.



The soundtrack to one of the ads being run by SVT is Circle Sky by the Monkees from 1968. Not only is it a great tune, it comes from one of the most surreal psychedelic films produced in the 1960's. An underground classic that rates with other psychadelic films produced which involved Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda and Roger Corman; Wild Angels, The Trip, Psych-Out,

Head (1968) begins (without any opening credits) at the dedication of a bridge. After a politician struggles with constant feedback with his microphone as he tries to give a speech, the Monkees suddenly interrupt the ceremony by running through the assembled officials, to the sound of various horns and sirens. The rest of the film is essentially plotless, a seemingly stream of consciousness stringing-together of musical numbers, satire of various film genres, elements of psychedelia, and references to topical issues such as the Vietnam War. Trailers for the film summarized it as a "most extraordinary adventure, western, comedy, love story, mystery, drama, musical, documentary satire." Some film critics[citation needed] now consider the film to be an allegorical deconstruction of the Monkees' experiences as pawns of the Hollywood starmaking machine that, like their real-life story itself, contains some sinister truths lurking underneath what appears to be a colorful, entrancing facade. Wikipedia

I watched Head many times as a young student in Australia in the late 1980s (along with Easy Rider and a lot of Al Pacino films), as we had a cheap VHS copy of it someone had bought in some closing down video rental. Thinking about it now it was a cut-up or remix and looking at the imdb it seems to have been constructed as such:

The movie's origin was in Ojai, California, where the foursome [the monkees], Bob Rafelson, and Jack Nicholson spent a weekend in a resort motel verbally tossing story ideas into a tape recorder. This became the script for this film.

The SVT campaign today is getting a lot of attention based on its criticism of other media outlets and their ownership structures. However, Head is a strange source for a state broadcaster to appropriate material from, as it depicts a lifestyle that, shall we say, is not really legal in Sweden today. I wonder if the perceived freedom of the 1960's (and the now wealthy demographic that can remember that time) is the target for Circle Sky, "We were free and we can be free again....with SVT." To get some idea of 'where Im coming from..man' here is the theatrical trailer for Head from 1968:

My News and the Myth of Media Transparency

The Swedish public service television has begun a new format for news broadcast. In an effort to bolster lagging ratings the SVT 9pm broadcast has done away with ties on men and now show long shots (5-10 seconds) of camera men scurrying around as presenters move about the scene, dominated by a huge plasma screen, chroma key video screen and a warm orange and red backdrop set.


Notice necktie missing. Here added by the SVT editorial to draw attention to the fact that it is missing.

So far nothing so extraordinary about a news broadcast reskinning. What is interesting about the 'new' SVT news is the ’Open Editorial’ broadcast that is now available on the website. Here, through a series of short videos 'we' are shown something of the processes behind the 30 minutes of news sent nightly by SVT at 9pm. The composition of these videos is interesting:

"But the question is, what will the editorial team achieve. Will Anna Hedenmo record a false direct (live on tape) with a Danish Police officer or will he [sic] go direct live with a link. It depends upon that he [sic] must translate."

To me these rhetorical questions suggest reality TV, which in a sense it is. What I find more interesting is the concept of transparency that is implied by ‘Open Editorial’. I agree with Jay Bolter, that media transparency is not only a myth; it has the potential to be dangerous:

The problem was that the operators [of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in 1979] did not question their interface. They treated the valve indicator as if it were a transparent window on the level of water inside the reactor. The operators should have been prepared for that possibility; they should have looked at the indicator rather than through it. Under the pressure of an emergency, however, they made the assumption of transparency. (Jay David Bolter and Diane Gromala Windows and Mirrors: Interaction Design, Digital Art, and the Myth of Transparency, 54), ( taken from The Myth of Transparency)

While we are looking through the ‘Open Editorial’ at the scene of the news making, we are perhaps being encouraged to believe that it is not being 'made' but rather is happening. We join our presenters at the scene:


Meanwhile at the desk side, a discussion of possibilities unfolds

In this image one should notice that we are at eye level with each of the participants and sharing the space with them from that perspective. All of the videos are constructed in a similar fashion. If the participants are sitting down then the camera is shooting from the eye height of someone sitting down (usually from the chair next to them).
In the next shot we gaze upon a reporter hard at work and the computer he is using is clearly branded. The national television network SVT is non-commercial, and has a policy against branding. But when we go behind the scenes we become aware of a level of branding that is probably inevitable in such a form:


The news is brought to you by Dell Computers

Finally, I would like you to compare SVT 'Open Editorial' with another form of 'open' news broadcasting. 'OhmyNews' is a citizens news network based in South Korea but that reaches all over the world:

"OhmyNews is a South Korean online newspaper with the motto "Every Citizen is a Reporter". It was founded by Oh Yeon Ho on February 22, 2000.

It is the first of its kind in the world to accept, edit and publish articles from its readers, in an open source style of news reporting. About 20% of the site's content is written by the 55-person staff while the majority of articles are written by other freelance contributors who are mostly ordinary citizens.

OhmyNews was influential in determining the outcome of the South Korean presidential elections in December 2002 with the election of Roh Moo Hyun. After being elected, Roh granted his first interview to OhmyNews.

OhmyNews International is an English language online newspaper that features "citizen reporter" articles written by contributors from all over the globe. Its content is almost 100% citizen reporter.

On February 22, 2006, OhmyNews and Japanese firm Softbank signed an investment contract valued at US$11 million. In 2006 OhmyNews started to build a Japan-based citizen-participatory journalism site called OhmyNews Japan, launched on August 28 with a famous Japanese journalist and 22 other employees working under ten reporters. These journalists' articles were the object of much criticism, on Nov. 17, 2006, the newspaper ended the citizen-participation aspect of the paper. The South Korean newspaper admitted that OhmyNews Japan had failed.[1]

The 2nd Citizen Reporters' Forum was held by OhmyNews in Seoul, Korea from July 12 to 15, 2006.

The 3rd International Citizen Reporters Forum was held by OhmyNews in Seoul from June 27 to 29 in 2007." Wikipedia

While the differences between 'Open Editorial' and 'OhmyNews' are clear and not surprising, it seems that the ambition of the former is to be more like the latter.

Joost Now Opens Window for All

The Internet TV platform Joost is now open for all (well, all who use Windows). So I've removed the invitations widget from my blog. Anyone can now download the software from the Joost website. As well Joost will begin streaming all post-season baseball:

Joost the rights to make on-demand game broadcasts and highlight clips from the 2007 MLB postseason, including the World Series, and Daily Rewind, an MLB.com produced daily highlight program, available on its streaming video distribution platform to a global viewing audience.