Captain Midnight (HBO) - Jamming

Jamming

On the morning of April 27, 1986, at 12:32am, John R. MacDougall, a satellite TV dealer in Ocala, Florida, was working at Central Florida Teleport, a company that uplinks services to satellites. He was overseeing the uplink of the movie Pee-wee's Big Adventure as part of the evening's programming for the now-defunct pay-per-view network People's Choice (which used Central Florida Teleport's facilities). At the end of his shift, he swung the dish back into its storage position, which aimed it at the location of Galaxy 1, the satellite that carried HBO. As a protest against the introduction of high fees and scrambling equipment, he transmitted a signal onto the satellite which overrode HBO's airing of The Falcon and the Snowman for 4½ minutes. The text message which appeared on the sets of HBO subscribers across the eastern half of the country read: