Captain Midnight broadcast signal intrusion message

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Captain Midnight broadcast signal intrusion message (1986)
by John R. MacDougall

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On April 27, 1986, American electrical engineer and business owner John R. MacDougall (using the pseudonym "Captain Midnight") jammed the Home Box Office (HBO) satellite signal on Galaxy 1 during a showing of the 1985 film The Falcon and the Snowman. The message, broadcast for four and a half minutes, was seen by the eastern half of the United States (accounting for more than half of HBO's 14.6 million subscribers at the time) protesting HBO's rates for satellite dish owners, which he considered too expensive. MacDougall was working at his second job as an operations engineer at the Central Florida Teleport uplink station in Ocala, Florida, and vied with a technician at HBO's communications center in Hauppauge, New York, for control of the transmission. The technician attempted to increase uplink power but gave up because of the risk of damaging the satellite. MacDougall eventually abandoned his control of the satellite.

3992011Captain Midnight broadcast signal intrusion message1986John R. MacDougall

GOODEVENING HBO

FROM CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT

$12.95/MONTH  ?

NO WAY !

[SHOWTIME/MOVIE CHANNEL BEWARE!]

This work is ineligible for copyright and therefore in the public domain, because it consists entirely of information that is common property and contains no original authorship.

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