Hahaha! Someone – confirmed to be “malicious” – inserted several seconds of porn into the Tucson broadcast of the Super Bowl. This certainly isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Keep reading to see the Max Headroom Chicago hijacking.

RTFA: http://www.tmz.com/2009/02/02/porn-clip-penetrates…

Super Bowl fans in Tucson, Ariz. were subjected to 30 seconds of hard core porn — wang and all — when somehow, the game feed was suddenly interrupted by a clip from an adult television channel.

Yes, this actually happened.

Comcast — the cable company in Tucson — is working on an explanation, but right now it appears the porn break-in only occurred in its standard-definition feed reaching analog TV sets.

Fortunately — or unfortunately, depending on your taste — high def viewers were spared the wiener shot.

This kindof reminds me of the famous Max Headroom Chicago hijacking, which is supremely weird and technologically awesome.

In 1987, Chicago TV channels WGN9 and WTTW-11 were hijacked by this guy wearing a Max Headroom mask. 20 years later, he is still at large.

This is a subtitled version of the original footage, since many people cannot tell what he’s saying, this makes it easier.

From Wikipedia:

The first occurrence of the signal intrusion took place during WGN-TV’s News at Nine. During Bears highlights in the sports report, the station’s signal was interrupted by a video of a person wearing a Max Headroom mask,[1] standing or sitting in front of a swaying sheet of corrugated metal imitating the background effect in the Max Headroom New Coke commercial. There was no audio, only a buzzing noise. The hijack was stopped after 20 seconds when WGN switched the modulation of their studio link to the John Hancock Center transmitter.[2]

The incident left sports reporter Dan Roan flustered, saying, “Well, if you’re wondering what happened, so am I.”[2]

[edit] WTTW 11

Later that night, around 11:15 p.m., during a broadcast of the Doctor Who serial Horror of Fang Rock, PBS station WTTW’s signal was hijacked using the same video that was broadcast during the WGN-TV hijack, this time with distorted audio.[1] The person in the Max Headroom mask appeared, as before, this time saying, “That does it. He’s a freakin’ nerd,” before laughing and jeering, “Yeah, I think I’m better than Chuck Swirsky. Freakin’ liberal.”[2]

The unidentified man continued to utter random phrases, including New Coke’s advertising slogan “Catch the Wave” while holding a Pepsi can (Max Headroom was a Coca-Cola spokesperson at the time), saying “Your love is fading”, humming the theme song to Clutch Cargo, and stating that he had “made a giant masterpiece for all the greatest world newspaper nerds” (the call letters WGN are an abbreviation for “World’s Greatest Newspaper”, in reference to the Tribune Company’s Chicago Tribune). He then held up a glove, said “my brother is wearing the other one”, and put the glove on. He then took the glove off, adding that it was “dirty.”

The picture suddenly cut over to a shot of the man’s lower torso. His buttocks were exposed, and he was holding the now-removed mask up to the camera while being spanked with a flyswatter by an unidentified accomplice wearing a dress, as the man exclaimed “They’re coming to get me!”. The accomplice then said, “Bend over, bitch!”[3]. The man then said, “Do it!” and moaned. The transmission then blacked out and cut off, and the hijack was over after about 90 seconds.[2]

Something tells me that the Tucson hijacking wasn’t the same sort of technological mystery, since the Chicago hijacking is still unsolved after 20 years… but we shall see.