Broadcast Signal Intrusion - Other Incidents

Other Incidents

In November 1977, a hoax audio message, purporting to come from outer space, was broadcast during an ITN news bulletin on Southern Television in the UK. The intrusion did not affect the video signal but replaced the programme audio with warnings as to the destiny of the human race and a disaster to affect "your world and the beings on other worlds around you." The IBA confirmed that it was the first time such a hoax transmission had been made.

In 2002, Falun Gong practitioners claimed to have broken into CCTV, the major television broadcaster in Mainland China, and other local stations in China to broadcast Falun Gong propaganda.

On January 3, 2007 in Australia, during a broadcast of an episode of the Canadian television series Mayday on the Seven Network, an audio loop unexpectedly started playing, clearly saying in an American accent, “Jesus Christ, help us all, Lord.” This same voice message continued to repeat itself over and over during the show for a total of six minutes. A spokesman for Seven later denied that the transmission was a prank or a security breach and claimed that the repeated line was actually part of the original broadcast and said, “Jesus Christ one of the Nazarenes,” although there is hardly any similarity between the two phrases. Subsequent investigation by independent researchers revealed that the invading transmission was actually from a video taped news broadcast of a civilian truck being ambushed in Iraq. It remains unknown whether or not this was an intentional act of television piracy or a genuine glitch of some sort.

On June 17, 2007, an intrusion incident occurred on Czech Television's Sunday morning programme Panorama, which shows panoramic shots of Prague and various locations across the country, especially mountain resorts. One of the cameras, located in Černý Důl in Krkonoše, had been tampered with on-site and its video stream was replaced with the hackers' own, which contained CGI of a small nuclear explosion in the local landscape, ending in white noise. The broadcast looked authentic enough; the only clue for the viewers was the Web address of the artist group Ztohoven, which had already performed several reality hacking incidents before. Czech Television is currently considering legal action against the group, and tourism workers in the area have expressed their outrage (since the programme serves to promote tourism in the areas shown).

On July 13, 2007, a grainy photo of a man and woman interrupted Washington, D.C. ABC affiliate WJLA's digital or HD signal. The picture was not transmitted over the analog signal, however. The incident was deemed a genuine signal intrusion by various websites but has since been confirmed to be the result of an older HDTV encoder malfunctioning in the early morning hours and going undetected. Station management stated that the image was from an advertisement for The Oprah Winfrey Show.

On April 20, 2012, three minutes of a gay pornographic film was broadcast during a morning news show on CHCH TV in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The night before a cable was cut; while it was being fixed on the morning of the incident, the adult programming was spliced to CHCH's feed.