WGN-TV

WGN-TV Channel 9 is the Chicago affiliate of the Warner Brothers television network. WGN-TV also broadcasts their programming (Sans the WB shows) via satellite to DirectTV, DishNetwork and cable television subscribers around the United States.

On November 29,1987 during the 9 O'Clock News sportscast WGN's broadcast signal was hijacked by an unknown person wearing a Max Headroom mask for approximately 25 Seconds, This was the first incident that night involving the interruption of a television station's broadcast signal. Approximately 2 hours later Chicago PBS station WTTW-TV Channel 11 had their broadcast interrupted by the same person. WGN's transmitter is atop the John Hancock building and engineers were almost immediately able to thwart the video hacker by changing the Studio To Transmitter frequency cutting them off. Unfortunately for WTTW whose transmitter is atop the Sears Tower they were unable to stop the hacker and were forced to endure almost two minutes of the hacker.