Doctor Who thing of the day: the “Max Headroom” pirate broadcast

One of the strangest incidents in American broadcasting history has a Doctor Who connection. An airing of the Tom Baker story “The Horror of Fang Rock” on Chicago PBS station WTTW on November 22, 1987, was interrupted by a pirate intrusion:



Weird. I remember hearing about this at the time and thinking how eerie it was. It was very much the sort of thing Max Headroom would have done to Network XXIII… except he would have used his intrusion to be actually entertaining and satirical.

The event made the national CBS Evening News the next night:

I bet this is the first time many Americans heard the phrase “Doctor Who.”

See wikipedia for more on the event, which remains unsolved.

(If you stumble across a cool Doctor Who thing, feel free to email me with a link.)

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