this is my era - I was born just before the transition to full time color broadcasting in the U.S. My father was a television Engineer, so I heard many stories.
Such as : late at night the station would receive satellite feeds for recording for the next days broadcast. Engineers working the graveyard shift would sometimes entertain themselves by watching un-encoded porn channel feeds while they worked. This was big trouble if they got caught.
Well, one late-night engineer hit the wrong switch and sent the porn feed out over live -to-air.
There was an investigation because the FCC doesn't like that. Needless to say, someone was looking for a new job.
Sad someone had to lose their job, but probably their best story that they get to tell friends.
Its funny that the worst possible thing that could happen would be for them to put the feed on the air. So many other things would be bad, but this is the worst, and somehow it happened. I wonder how easy it was for it to happen?
Fairly easy if you're not paying attention - it's a matter of pressing a few buttons and selecting the wrong source to output. The switching system isn't that complex, but it takes a little practice to learn it. It's similar to high-end home theater systems.
>who is paying money to a phone line to be insulted?
So.... back around '86 or so I was in high school and home sick. For some reason I was getting calls from random weirdos all day, and since I was a LOT less patient back then I'd let them know how I felt about their calls. Quite vociferously. Couldn't figure out why I was getting these calls until I went back to school and found a "Dial Abuse" card with my number on it. A friend made them and as passing them around the school. So yeah, for a limited time folks could have had this for free....
Well.... this is just how he is. He does standup and some acting now. (Go fig.) He did sorta make it up a month later. I had an extra copy of Grimjack #1 he coveted and I offered to trade it for 50 souls. So he went around the school and got 50 (55 after removing the jokesters) people to sign their souls over to me. (This was years before the Simpsons episode.)
If there is an afterlife, I may have some explaining to do....
What’s truly inspired about the faux Max Headroom intrusion of Chicago’s WTTW is that the pirate transmission was pretty much indistinguishable from the low-production values of that era’s “Doctor Who.” What’s also interesting is that considering how woke a universe timelords are obliged to endure now, nobody would bat an eyelash at a scene today featuring some guy’s bare ass getting spanked with a flyswatter.
I do try and think about how I would have reacted to this if I had seen it live? I would like to think that I would realize it was an intrusion, but maybe I wouldn't have right away. Hard to put myself back in the mind space.
this is my era - I was born just before the transition to full time color broadcasting in the U.S. My father was a television Engineer, so I heard many stories.
Such as : late at night the station would receive satellite feeds for recording for the next days broadcast. Engineers working the graveyard shift would sometimes entertain themselves by watching un-encoded porn channel feeds while they worked. This was big trouble if they got caught.
Well, one late-night engineer hit the wrong switch and sent the porn feed out over live -to-air.
There was an investigation because the FCC doesn't like that. Needless to say, someone was looking for a new job.
Sad someone had to lose their job, but probably their best story that they get to tell friends.
Its funny that the worst possible thing that could happen would be for them to put the feed on the air. So many other things would be bad, but this is the worst, and somehow it happened. I wonder how easy it was for it to happen?
Fairly easy if you're not paying attention - it's a matter of pressing a few buttons and selecting the wrong source to output. The switching system isn't that complex, but it takes a little practice to learn it. It's similar to high-end home theater systems.
>who is paying money to a phone line to be insulted?
So.... back around '86 or so I was in high school and home sick. For some reason I was getting calls from random weirdos all day, and since I was a LOT less patient back then I'd let them know how I felt about their calls. Quite vociferously. Couldn't figure out why I was getting these calls until I went back to school and found a "Dial Abuse" card with my number on it. A friend made them and as passing them around the school. So yeah, for a limited time folks could have had this for free....
Your friend is a jerk, but you gotta admire that level of creativity. Not sure I would be able to match that prank.
Were you in some sort of prank war or was this just the normal? (I had some friends where this sort of stuff was how we interacted)
Well.... this is just how he is. He does standup and some acting now. (Go fig.) He did sorta make it up a month later. I had an extra copy of Grimjack #1 he coveted and I offered to trade it for 50 souls. So he went around the school and got 50 (55 after removing the jokesters) people to sign their souls over to me. (This was years before the Simpsons episode.)
If there is an afterlife, I may have some explaining to do....
It’s paradise Jim, but not as we know it.
SNL just had a pretty big glitch this past weekend: https://latenighter.com/news/technical-issue-forces-snl-to-temporarily-halt-live-show/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_source_platform=mailpoet&utm_campaign=tech-issue-forces-snl-to-briefly-halt-live-show-2395
There's an excellent episode of Inside No. 9 that plays with the concept of a live tv glitch to excellent effect called Dead Line.
Thanks for sharing. This is exactly the type of stuff I love. The silence is almost eerie when it is unexplained.
Network and cable TV still have the odd glitch, but they don't use the cards anymore: they just abruptly fade out and fade in again.
They need to bring back the cards.
What’s truly inspired about the faux Max Headroom intrusion of Chicago’s WTTW is that the pirate transmission was pretty much indistinguishable from the low-production values of that era’s “Doctor Who.” What’s also interesting is that considering how woke a universe timelords are obliged to endure now, nobody would bat an eyelash at a scene today featuring some guy’s bare ass getting spanked with a flyswatter.
I do try and think about how I would have reacted to this if I had seen it live? I would like to think that I would realize it was an intrusion, but maybe I wouldn't have right away. Hard to put myself back in the mind space.