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Archive: digital television

The big Freeview re-tune — more digital dregs?

2 October 2009 09:00

Categories: Current affairs, Media, Technology, Television, The Pod Delusion

This is an accompanying article to my contribution on this week’s episode of The Pod Delusion. You can listen below.

This week, Freeview has had one of its occasional retuning events. As new channels come and old channels go, the channel list becomes increasingly messy until the point where the powers-that-be decide enough is enough and it’s time to bring some organisation to it.

This sort of thing is a necessary evil of the digital era. But I feel sorry for those, particularly older, people who are used to setting up their television once when they buy it, then making do with two and a half channels for the rest of their lives.

A couple of weeks ago in the first episode of The Pod Delusion, James O’Malley spoke about the bonkers-sounding Conspiracy Channel. Sadly, I do not have Sky, so have been unable to sample its delights for myself. I must rely on humble Freeview for my post analogue switch-off telly fix.

Freeview brings a wealth of choice that simply did not exist on analogue terrestrial television. That is of course a good thing, and I personally cannot imagine going back to making do with the five analogue channels. But there is an element of truth to that Fry & Laurie sketch, where a dining Government minister is dumped on by the waiter with a “choice” of cutlery which turns out to be countless plastic coffee stirrers.

At the same time as this week’s big retune, the long-awaited launch of Quest, the new channel from Discovery, has taken place. Its original launch had already been long delayed and finally aborted at the last minute several months ago.

While a channel that promises something resembling quality struggled to get off the ground, there has been no shortage of utter crud getting airtime on Freeview. In fact, I struggled to think of any half-decent channels that had launched recently. So I decided to look it up, and see what changes had been made to Freeview over the previous year.

10 September — Smile TV 2 (a mucky Babestation-style channel; closed on 19 March)
January — Rocks & Co (shopping channel)
8 January — SuperCasino (roulette channel)
8 January — NetPlay TV (broadcasting shopping programmes or infomercials)
15 January — CNN International — 4 hours per day
22 January — Dave+1
2 February — Russia Today — 2 hours per day
3 February — DirectGov (text service)
12 March — Partyland
1 April — Gems TV — 5 hours per day
5 April — CNN increases hours to 7 hours per day, 2 hours of which is SuperCasino
1 May — Gems TV closed down
13 May — Smile TV 2 relaunched — 5 hours per day
14 May — Quest — 14 hours per day — launch aborted!
20 May — Virgin 1 goes 24 hours per day
20 May — Virgin 1+1 — 12 hours per day
23 May — Film4 extends hours
1 July — Create & Craft (shopping channel) launches — 5 hours per day
4 July — Russia Today gets second slot — 2 hours per day
15 July — Big Deal (quiz channel) launches — 7 hours per day
27 August — Price-drop tv returns
27 August — Smile TV 3
27 August — Babestation
30 September — Quest launched

So a couple of channels — Film4 and Virgin 1 — have extended their hours. A couple of news channels have been able to find scraps of space here and there. I say news channels, though in the case of Russia Today, propaganda may be a more accurate description. These channels broadcast at quite obscure hours. It is certainly an interesting spin on the concept of “24 hour news”.

Beyond that, the vast majority of new Freeview channels are pure trash. There are two new “+1″ channels, replaying exactly what was broadcast on a channel an hour ago. By my reckoning, there are now at least five such channels on Freeview, which doesn’t seem like the best use of limited bandwidth.

Beyond that, there is a collection of shopping channels, gambling channels, quiz channels and adult channels. Frankly, this is the sort of stuff you expect at the arse end of the darkest nooks of the Sky EPG. I am not quite sure this is what they had in mind when the digital revolution was promised.

The Babestation channels have long been a fixture on Sky. But their presence on Freeview is relatively novel. They are interesting for the fact that it hasn’t taken long for four of them to crop up. It is surprising because their appeal seems rather limited to me.

If you have never seen it (er, not that I’m an expert, of course), basically the format is quite simple. A few glamour models who couldn’t present their way out of a paper bag sit on a couch trying to encourage people to phone in for a mucky chit-chat.

Once someone with more money than sense takes the bait, the microphone is switched off, and some cheap-sounding music is turned up. The women proceeds to talk dirty on the phone — without the viewer being able to hear a word. They sort of wriggle around on the couch in a way that I assume is supposed to look sexy, but it really just makes them look vaguely like they need the toilet.

In short, it is the modern-day equivalent of the dodgy services advertised on business cards left in piss-stained telephone boxes, only with the beady eye of Ofcom overseeing proceedings. There is nothing extreme in the slightest about these channels. You wonder what goes through the mind of people who would sooner pay through the nose to sample such services when you could quite easily find more enticing free porn on the internet.

Up until this week’s retune, the positioning of one of these channels — Partyland — in the channel list was certainly interesting. It was channel number 50, but with no channels occupying numbers 51-69, the next channel up was CBBC. Even though the broadcasting hours do not clash, I can imagine plenty of children just pressing the down button on their remote and coming across a strange new channel promising a party land. It certainly would provide a more eye-popping rite of passage than accidentally stumbling across the frilly knickers section of the Argos catalogue.

It remains to be seen whether these channels remain a long-term fixture on the Freeview platform. One trashy genre which sadly appears to have stood the test of time is quiz channels. These late-night televisual travesties are hypnotically awful. A slightly desperate presenter will appear to engage you in a stare-out competition while goading you into answering questions with non-existent answers.

Even though they still live on, such quiz channels are not quite as prevalent as they used to be. They were a major victim of the collapse in trust that broadcasters faced a couple of years ago. Into the vacuum came the gambling channels.

It’s noted that this sort of programming tends to be on late at night, especially at the weekend. In other words, they are aimed squarely at the post-pub market.

The morals are pretty dubious. The clear idea is to target people whose judgement has been impaired by their alcoholic consumption, goading people into phoning premium rate phone lines when they perhaps shouldn’t. In the case of the gambling channels, it could be said that they intend to capture a particular section of the population that may have problems with addiction.

This is not quite the vision of digital television that was sold to the public. It is funny how most of the extra “choice” that has been brought into our living rooms revolves around extracting large amounts of cash from our wallets.

7 comments

Twelve years of ITV-F1

13 November 2008 00:44

Categories: History, Opinion, Report

As well as David Coulthard’s career, the Brazilian Grand Prix brought down the curtain on another fixture of Formula 1 life. ITV broadcast their last grand prix before Formula 1 moves back to the BBC for 2009 onwards.

ITV’s first race was way back in 1997, the Australian Grand Prix. “Do not adjust your sets,” said anchor Jim Rosenthal. “This is Formula 1 on ITV.” My recollection is hazy. I was just 10 at the time. I had begun watching Formula 1 in 1995 or 1996, right at the tail end of the BBC’s F1 coverage.

Up until that point, Formula 1 was only ever shown on the BBC and in a lot of ways it was unthinkable for the sport to move over to commercial television. The first BBC Grand Prix was broadcast in 1976 — on a circuit that, albeit radically altered, is still used by F1 today: Fuji.

Their last grand prix was also in Japan, at Suzuka in 1996. For the occasion, they put together a package that really highlighted just how much of the history of Formula 1 — both good and bad — the BBC had brought to British homes over the years.

At the time, the downside of Formula 1 moving to ITV was obvious: the constant commercial breaks. This was a sad reality of Formula 1 coverage on ITV, and there was no use in complaining about it. For as long as F1 was on ITV, it was going to be interrupted by adverts.

That doesn’t make the pill any less bitter though. It has been estimated by Keith Collantine that over the course of its 206 grands prix, ITV took enough commercial breaks to miss 31 races’ worth of action — almost two entire seasons. The number of important events that ITV missed are almost too countless to mention. Lewis Hamilton’s gearbox failure in Brazil 2007, Michael Schumacher’s engine blowing in Suzuka 2006 and the infamous incident when ITV interrupted an intense battle between Fernando Alonso and Michael Schumacher in the final few laps at Imola 2005 are just a few examples from recent years.

Once, ITV even opted not to show the United States Grand Prix live on ITV1, shifting it to the digital-only ITV2. This was in the pre-Freeview era, at a time when digital television viewers were very much in a minority. The decision to leave F1 fans in the lurch like this was a real slap in the face. Thankfully, ITV never repeated this stunt with any other race, although a good few qualifying sessions have been shown on digital-only channels over the years.

The adverts were not the only issue people had with ITV’s coverage. The obsession with Lewis Hamilton was almost suffocating. Their previous fixation with Jenson Button was more muted, but more ridiculous since Button was not even a fraction as good as Hamilton.

Other elements of the ‘pre-race show’ were also criticised for their light nature. Cooking with Heikki Kovalainen, anyone? Then there were the countless tedious reports about “glamorous” events.

The commentary has been another focal point for criticism. James Allen is a good writer (I’m a big fan of his book about Michael Schumacher, The Edge of Greatness). He was also good as a pitlane reporter. However, his commentary grated with many, including me.

There is no doubt that it is a tough job, and some of the sheer vitriol that was written about James Allen by some people was not justified. But I never understood why ITV did not give another commentator (such a Ben Edwards) a chance given that the unpopularity of James Allen was so widespread.

Then there is Ted Kravitz, who is an excellent journalist. But too often he got over-excited in the heat of the moment and sometimes regressed into stating the obvious. He was never too far from saying something like, “They’re putting on some new tyres. And, is that?… YES, some fuel is going in as well.” It is fair to say that when Murray Walker retired, the quality of ITV’s coverage took a step backward.

ITV’s coverage was not all bad though. There is no doubt that Formula 1 coverage in the UK has come on leaps and bounds since ITV gained the rights in 1997. It is worth remembering that the BBC did not even show qualifying often until its last few years of coverage. In this respect, ITV has fewer blots on its copybook, although I don’t doubt that the BBC would have moved in a similar direction. After all, broadcasting in general has changed a lot over the past twelve years.

In its final moments, I felt that ITV were pretty open about the shortfalls of their coverage. Steve Rider wrapped up the highlights of the Brazilian Grand Prix saying, “no more awkward commercial breaks”. I can only imagine the embarrassment that the producers must have felt whenever something important happened during a commercial break.

James Allen has also responded to his critics, saying:

I was always pretty confident that when Murray decided to retire I would get the gig, but never anything less than utterly self-critical and seeking to improve with every race and every year, which I think I’ve done.

It’s a very difficult and high-pressure job, because with 20 cars there are 20 different points of focus…

Of course there are many people at home in their armchairs who think they could do it better and one of the challenges for me was that I replaced Murray just as the internet opened up to allow everyone to have their say in chat rooms and forums.

But I know from market research and viewer feedback that the pros massively outnumber the vocal minority of cons.

Despite the criticisms though, I think overall ITV and North One can be proud of what they have done over the past twelve seasons. Tomorrow I will look at some of my memories from ITV’s coverage over the years.

1 comment

The end of local television?

1 October 2008 01:09

Categories: Current affairs, Economics, Edinburgh, Fife, Internet, Media, Newspapers, Politics, Scotland, Technology, Television

Last week Ofcom gave ITV the go-ahead to cut regional output by 50%. Today ITV have duly gone and cut 1,000 jobs, almost half of which will come from regional news. ITV plc looks set to reduce the number of its regional news areas from 17 to nine.

It does make you wonder about the future of regional television, if it even exists. I have personally never been a fan of regional television, and I say that even having lived all my life in a very distinctive part of the UK. I might be the wrong person to ask though. I’m no fan of the “idiot box”. Next year, when F1 finally goes back to the BBC where it belongs, I will probably be able to say that I do not watch commercial television at all.

But regional television, it is fair to say, is not exactly pain-free viewing. More often that not, you can tell the programmes were made on a minuscule budget, and they are generally pretty naff.

Of course, back in the day, most ITV programmes were “regional” in the sense that they were made by one of the ITV franchisees. But the best programmes went out on the network and were therefore aimed at a national audience, with UK-sized aspirations and UK-sized budgets. As such, programmes that were aimed to serve a particular area were, almost by definition, sub-standard. I do wonder quite what the point of such programmes is.

It is slightly different for regional news. I can understand the appeal of having a separate bulletin dedicated to the news in a particular area. But the thing is that the regions are always too big for the bulletins to have a truly ‘local’ feel.

The ITV region I live in, STV Central, stretches from approximately where I live to Fort William while encompassing the massive populations of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Strathclyde. Watching the bulletin, you would get the impression that hardly anything ever happens outside of Glasgow apart from the politics stuff which happens in Edinburgh. Even many of the political programmes, both on STV and BBC Scotland, are made in Glasgow rather than Edinburgh. If you live anywhere else, it can feel pretty alienating.

The BBC has never even attempted to split Scotland up into regions and Reporting Scotland essentially aspires to be a national news bulletin. The problem with even this is that there either isn’t enough news to report or there isn’t enough budget. Even Scotland, with its large area and separate institutions — most importantly, the Parliament — apparently doesn’t have enough going on to properly justify taking up 30 minutes of the schedule.

Whenever I watch Reporting Scotland, they seem to spend about five minutes per programme trailing what’s coming up later in the programme. Around five minutes into the programme, they are already talking about sport. And then they are normally only talking about football. Jimmy McPhee is in the airport today ready to depart for his meaningless match. Big whoop!

Another problem with regional news — especially on ITV — is the fact that the regions do not seem to be very logical. I’ve already talked about the huge area covered by STV Central. At some arbitrary point in Glenrothes, probably depending on how far behind the hill you are, you stop receiving STV Central and start receiving STV North / the old Grampian. Why is that then? Is Glenrothes more relevant to Aberdeen than to Glasgow? That’s not clear to me. Bearing in mind the fact that much of the population of Glenrothes is or was Glasgow overspill, it doesn’t seem quite right.

Of course, that is nothing compared to the abominable “Border” region which straddles England and Scotland and takes in the Isle of Man for good measure. That is an anachronism if ever there was one. You can tell the ITV regions were originally drawn up about sixty years ago because that would never wash today. I am no nationalist, though I am a little bit of a conspiracy theorist, and one has to wonder if it was a deliberate choice to have one ITV region that took in these three political entities — a 1960s equivalent of saying “North Britain”.

It is probably wrong for me speak for residents of the ITV Border region when I don’t live there, and I can well believe that there are many people who, having grown up with Lookaround, feel very attached to it. But for me, if I lived in the south of Scotland, with legislation affecting my life being made in Edinburgh, I think I would prefer to get my news from a Scottish city rather than Carlisle.

Of course, as Cllr Fraser Macpherson points out, that situation will be even worse under ITV’s new proposals. If ITV get their way, the Border and Tyne Tees regions will be merged. So Scots living in the Borders will not be getting their news from Carlisle — they’ll be getting their news from Gateshead.

The problems of the ITV Border region are recognised, with the existence of a ‘Border Scotland’ opt-out. From what I gather, this incorporates a news segment dedicated to Scotland and editions of Scotsport. What a faff that is though. Would it not just be more sensible to go the whole hog and recognise Scotland as a distinct entity? Every so often SMG express an interest in buying the Scottish bit of the ITV Border franchise. I kind of think they ought to get on with it, particularly if it’s only going to merge with Tyne Tees otherwise.

There are two big reasons why the situation is such a mess. One is geography. I am sure there are bureaucrats somewhere or other whose dream is for the ITV regions to be transformed so that they match the government office regions of the UK. At least that would be neater, and at least that way Scotland would have its own ITV region.

The problem is, those pesky hills get in the way. There is a clever map of the ITV regions on Wikipedia, and as you can see you can’t actually draw many meaningful borders between regions. The map looks like a mess.

The big reason, though, is of course money. Maybe back in the 1960s and 1970s owning an ITV franchise was a license to print money. Today, ITV leaks money like a sieve. Richard Havers traces the change back to the introduction of satellite television. This sucked advertising revenue away from ITV and spread it thinly across hundreds of smaller channels.

Since then, the ITV companies have merged and merged and merged until they became CarltonAndGranada before becoming the ITV plc we all love to hate. Scotland was not immune either as Scottish Television swallowed up Grampian to become SMG (now STV Group) and subsequently almost merged with UTV.

It now no longer makes financial sense for ITV companies to pour money into making news programmes. Economies of scale dictate that the regions will become fewer and bigger until they cease to be regional at all (and as I argue above, perhaps that has already happened).

I think it is time to give up on the idea of regional news programmes, at least on ITV (though Scotland can probably sustain it thanks to its status as a nation, relatively large population and separate political system). But if regional news must stay on television, perhaps it would be better to think of it as a public service that the BBC alone should carry out. I know that ITV is a PSB too, but they are considering giving that up because they think it costs them too much now. The writing is on the wall.

Besides, if I want to know the local news, where do I go? I certainly don’t watch Scotland Today if I want to find out what’s going on locally. I would buy The Fife Free Press or just visit a local news website. These options are probably far more cost-effective way to get local news.

Apart from that, dare I say that local news might be one arena where people turn more and more towards citizen journalists?

10 comments

How to break Freeview overnight

7 March 2008 22:20

Categories: Current affairs, Entertainment, General, Media, Personal, Technology, Television

A long time ago — perhaps a year ago — my Freeview box flashed up a little notice that appears from time to time. It notifies me that new software is available to download, and it assures me that this will definitely result in an improvement in the service. Or words to that effect.

Normally, that is more or less true. But this one time the software was downloaded, and my Freeview box has not quite been the same since.

The software was for the Teletext Extra service. In essence, Teletext Extra is just a really elaborate, annoying EPG. Quite why this was required when I already had a perfectly functioning 7 day EPG is unclear.

What is clear is that I have been unable to use my Freeview box in the same way since that day. Every time the box is switched on it defaults to Teletext Extra. You then have to wrestle with the remote control just to switch this blasted EPG off. It’s as though they thought I would want to switch me television on to do something other than watch television.

Mercifully, the old default EPG is still available, so you can choose never to see the Teletext Extra service. Don’t think this gets rid of all the bloat bullshit though.

If, for instance, I dare to switch it off at the mains, the next time I want to watch television I am harassed by a new message telling me that I might as well have thrown my television off a cliff. It then switches into some kind of spooky mode in between standby and full power which makes the red light flash.

It remains in this mode for several minutes, sometimes around half an hour by my estimation, downloading crap for this rubbish EPG. The EPG that I don’t use, and have actively switched off.

In these energy-conscious times, it seems like an anachronism to actually be forced to leave my Freeview box on standby permanently. And just why does it take half an hour to download this programme information when the old default EPG managed it with no bother, with no time-consuming downloads?

Even worse, should I be committing the heinous crime of watching television at either 3am or 5am, the Freeview box displays yet another message warning me that I have 30 seconds to press the ‘quit’ button on my remote control or else it will go into the aforementioned spooky mode. Worst of all, sometimes for whatever reason it ignores my button presses, and I have mashed the quit button so much in my attempts to avoid spooky mode that it is now partially broken.

I mean, is this not just immensely stupid? Is there not a way for the box to say to itself, “Oh, it looks like my owner is watching television. I guess I had better not bombard him with messages obscuring the programme, and I had definitely better not switch myself off automatically.” Seemingly not!

The worst bit comes, though, when you want to watch television when it has already entered spooky mode. You can press the power button all you want, but there is only a small chance that it will ever bring itself out of spooky mode to allow you to watch television. You know watching television. It’s that thing that I bought the blasted box for in the first place! Even if you manage to get it to stop its spooky behaviour, chances are you will be greeted by a blank screen, so you will have to try again.

Now this is becoming big news. It seems as though I am not the only person to have experienced trouble with this Teletext Extra service. In fact, several people have reported a variety of different complaints ever since Teletext Extra began to pollute the DTT service.

Given the immensely important role DTT and Freeview has to play in the impending analogue switch off, the fact that Teletext have rolled out a service that has crippled so many boxes is rather concerning. Particularly given that I never use the Teletext Extra service, nor do I ever intend to use it in the future as I already have a completely fine EPG on my Freeview box, I do regret letting the download happen.

Having said that, I can’t even remember if I had the opportunity to refuse it. I certainly was not made aware of the nature of the download — what it was for, and the implications it would have on the functionality of my Freeview box. No doubt if I did refuse the download, I would still to this day be getting the notifications every time I switched on my Freeview box.

3 comments

We interrupt this programme

5 January 2008 03:50

Categories: Current affairs, Media, Radio, Technology, Television

A couple of times in the past I have blogged about numbers stations, a slightly creepy phenomenon where coded messages are broadcast over shortwave radio frequencies.

But more recently I have become interested in a similar phenomenon which is almost the reverse of numbers stations. Whereas numbers stations are seemingly utilised by the state for spying activities, broadcast signal intrusion is usually the opposite — members of the public hijacking television and radio broadcasts.

Perhaps the most well known is a pirate who posed as Max Headroom, hijacking two broadcasts in Chicago in 1987. The perplexing thing about it is that the broadcast was so cryptic — if it had a meaning at all, that is — that most people just scratch their heads wondering about the imposter’s motive.

The first successful hijack was short lived. It interrupted the evening news bulletin on WGN. However, only the images came through, and no audio was broadcast. An engineer at the transmitter site was able to re-gain control within 30 seconds.

Reports say that the pirate attempted to hijack several other broadcasts in Chicago, but none of them were successful. But two hours later the imposter successfully interrupted an episode of Doctor Who that was being broadcast on WTTW. No engineer was present at the transmitter, so the pirate broadcast carried on until its end. It lasted only 90 seconds, but it could have been much longer.

If numbers stations didn’t send shivers up your spine, surely this would. Imagine sitting there watching television as normal, only to be faced with this creepy transmission.

The video fascinates me. First of all, as I have mentioned, the motives are unclear. There is a cryptic message about “the greatest world newspaper nerds”. WGN, the first station to be hijacked, stands for World’s Greatest Newspaper. This suggests that WGN was the real target, but with the attempt having misfired the imposter went on to find any old place to broadcast his odd — at points disturbing — message. Even if you reach the conclusion that the message was aimed at WGN, what that message actually was is a complete mystery.

Some speculate that whoever was behind the video was simply drunk or high. I doubt this is the case. The broadcast was clearly pre-meditated. It is obvious that the message was pre-recorded because it went out twice, and there are continuity errors when the shot changes towards the end of the broadcast.

There are also probably at least three people involved in the making of the broadcast. There are at least two actors, and two people would probably be required to rotate the sheet of corrugated metal that’s used as the backdrop (the rotation is not CGI or mechanical because it is inconsistent).

A lot of technical equipment may be involved as well. Immediately after the hijacking, authorities claimed that a transmitter powerful enough to hijack a television broadcast would cost as much as $600,000 to buy, or several thousand dollars to rent. However, it seems as though this was misinformation designed to dissuade copycats.

Nevertheless, it is clearly at least a semi-professional job. Even putting aside the equipment needed to overpower a television broadcast signal, the quality of the recording looks really good for 1987 standards and the distortion in the vocals suggests at least a modicum of expertise. It obviously wasn’t amateur stuff.

Yet, the message and motive is difficult to decipher. YouTube contains another video containing subtitles with a likely transcript of what the imposter dressed as Max Headroom was saying. If you’re interested enough, I’d also skim through the comments which have interesting additional suggestions. (The subtitles in the YouTube video are definitely wrong in parts.)

Over twenty years on, people are still unclear about the intentions behind the pirate broadcast. It was clearly designed to be ambiguous. But it clearly took considerable time and effort to pull it off. No-one has ever come forward to admit to the pirate broadcasts.

Perhaps the person did it just for fun — a precursor to the hacker culture that became more prevalent in the 1990s. Perhaps it was social commentary. After all, the original Max Headroom programmes were set in a future dystopia where the world was run by giant television corporations and freedom fighters utilised exactly this trick of interrupting regular broadcasts.

The theory I favour holds that the person was a former employee of WGN who had been fired — not by his boss, but by an underling (hence the line “be a man”). This was his form of revenge.

There is a brilliant article about the Max Headroom pirating incident at Damn Interesting.

The fake Max Headroom remains at large, but another (less sophisticated) hijack broadcaster was caught. This simple broadcast is less intriguing than the Max Headroom incident in terms of its message, but is interesting because it is a successful hijacking of a satellite transmission.

A person calling himself Captain Midnight hijacked an HBO broadcast with a simple caption complaining about the channel’s price. The caption also contained an ominous threat, seemingly implying that broadcasts on two other channels would also be hijacked.

It transpired that Captain Midnight was John MacDougall, a satellite television dealer who felt that HBO’s then new fangled subscription model was hurting his sales. He was caught when a member of the public overheard him bragging about it.

Less well-known, but perhaps the scariest hijack broadcast of them all, happened in the UK way back in 1977. This seems to be among the very first examples of hijacking a broadcast, and is perhaps the most impressive. Unlike the Max Headroom incident, the motive here was clear, the message was relatively unambiguous and the broadcast was a complete success.

During an ITN news bulletin broadcast on Southern Television, the audio started crackling and the newsreader’s voice was replaced by that of “Vrillon of the Ashtar Galactic Command”. The pictures of the news broadcast continued uninterrupted. But the sound of the news was replaced by an ‘alien’ warning of an imminent global disaster unless humans became peaceful and dismantled their weapons.

Here is a great video — the audio is genuine but the pictures are not. Carry on until the end to hear follow-up news reports on the incident.

Vrillon of the Ashtar Galactic Command Incident from Labyrinth13 on Vimeo.

An impressive feat. The audio is very crackly in moments, but this is a successful hijacking of a broadcast to disseminate a clear message. Like the Max Headroom incident, a lot of planning appeared to go into it, with a series of electronic effects designed to make it sound like an alien broadcast, and samples of Looney Tunes cartoons.

Once again, the imposters have never come forward. However, given the message that put out and the irreverent set-up, it seems likely that it was a group of students who had some technical know-how and access to decent equipment.

It was rather naughty though, and clearly very distressing for some viewers. I suppose I would be too. What I would do is switch the channel to make sure I wasn’t going mad or that aliens actually were talking to me. However, these imposters successfully hijacked five major terrestrial transmitters. This is concerning, because it means that these people could feasibly have hijacked every television channel in one area and then some.

These successful hijacks are really disturbing. Apparently it is easy to hijack an analogue television signal. The only reason we haven’t seen more of it is simply because people haven’t found out about it.

Although there are only a few well-known instances of broadcast intrusion in the western world, they are much more common in less free countries. Falun Gong use the technique in China. And according to Wikipedia they were a regular feature of television in the Soviet Union.

In the mid-1980s one of Poland’s leading astronomers, Jan Hanasz, managed to superimpose captions on top of state television broadcasts. Using basic equipment, he and three others managed to display the logo of the Solidarność labour movement and implored viewers to boycott elections. Some say this action was one of the first cracks in the Iron Curtain.

That is an example of using this technique for good. But imagine if there was a genuine major national emergency. Any rogue elements with enough know-how and resources could easily hijack the emergency transmissions to spread misinformation or generally wreak havoc and cause panic.

A part of me wonders if this is the real reason why governments around the world are in the process of switching off analogue transmissions and engaging in a digital switchover process. Digital broadcast signals are encrypted, making them much more difficult to hijack.

But pranksters are using different methods to hijack digital broadcasts. Some Czech artists are currently standing trial after they tampered with on-site camera equipment to make a computer-generated mushroom cloud appear in a panorama shot during a weather forecast.