digital control room for KUED and UEN-TV at th...
digital control room for KUED and UEN-TV at the Eccles Broadcast Center (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Campaign Chunk Volume 10.3 – The Broadcast Interruption

23 years ago, on a Sunday evening in mid-summer, many people were sitting down to watch the various TV channels and shows that were being broadcast at the time. At 5:35 PM, all the TV signals in one location covering around 200 square miles were interrupted by what first appeared to be static. After 10 seconds a garbled voice along with what appeared to be an animated head appeared and started talking in some odd language. This message repeated twice and then regular service resumed.

What had happened was that the TV signal had somehow been hacked into and a new message was broadcast. On investigation, it appeared to be the result of a group of teenagers messing around and this was considered to be the official story and has been stuck to by the authorities.

This would have been accepted by almost everyone if it was not for the fact that the message was repeated again when those who had been blamed was in custody or had very strong and reliable alibis. Eventually, the case against them was dropped due to lack of evidence.

It would have faded from the public memory if not for one major factor. Despite what the authorities told everyone, there was no transmitter or another device ever found that could have made the signal and the local station had no facility or way it could have been hacked into without serious modification.

To this day the question remains : Who did the transmission and why?

Hooks & Rumours

  • Some are saying it was a test by another nation to see if they could regular interrupt broadcasts for propaganda reasons.
  • Apparently there was another “hack” the same night in another location, but the message was slightly different. No-one has come up with an explanation as to why this message had different content from the main one.
  • One theory is that the signal was to a bunch of sleep agents in the region to start their operations.
  • Modern investigation techniques have revealed that the signal contains data that would simply not have been possible with common technology at the time , only military grade equipment could have produced these signature markings within the signal.
  • A few people have messed around with the recordings of the signal and have found out that it was a normal message played in reverse – The “normal” message is believed to be in fact several quotes from the Bible and scientific texts, with no apparent reason for them.

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