Top 10 Scariest Times TV Broadcasts Were Interrupted
Watching the news is scary enough without things like this happening! For this list, we’ll be looking at the most spine-chilling moments where broadcasts had their feeds unexpectedly cut due to human intervention.
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00:00 you do what they tell you to do and hope that someone's going to save you.
00:03 Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the top 10 scariest times
00:08 broadcasts were interrupted. For this list, we'll be looking at the most spine-chilling
00:19 moments where broadcasts had their feeds unexpectedly cut due to human intervention.
00:24 Did you watch any of these broadcast hijackings live? Let us know in the comments below.
00:29 Hey, Mojoholics! For a chance to win cash prizes, play our live daily trivia challenges
00:35 every day at 3pm and 8pm Eastern, only at watchmojo.com/play.
00:39 Many, many Falun Gong people insisted that their health was so much better
00:51 and that they had to do it for their children.
00:55 Falun Gong is an alternative spirituality movement that originated in China in the early 1990s.
01:00 Led by Li Hongzhi, the new religious group has faced intense persecution from the Chinese
01:06 government, which has since declared it a heretical organization. In 2002, state TV
01:11 broadcasts were hijacked by members of the Fulongong to air a clip of Hongzhi, with most
01:17 reports stating the event lasted almost an hour. It was also accompanied by a film that accused
01:22 the Chinese government of oppression. The film addressed the 2001 Tiananmen Square self-immolation
01:28 incident involving some of their alleged members, which they claimed was staged by the government.
01:32 These hijackings actually occurred multiple times throughout 2002 and resulted in the arrest and
01:37 conviction of 15 members of the group. Falun Gong never really have a particular, from organization
01:45 point of view, when you use Falun Gong as an organization, do not have a policy that, "Oh,
01:51 master said you go and vote for him."
01:54 9. AL-MANAR TV BROADCAST HIJACK
01:57 The 2006 Lebanon War was a conflict primarily between Israeli Defense Forces and the Lebanese
02:03 militant group Hezbollah. As the war raged on in mid-2006, Israel launched physical and
02:09 psychological warfare on the Hezbollah TV station, Al-Manar. In addition to striking
02:14 the station's headquarters, they also interrupted their satellite transmission to broadcast messages
02:19 of their own. One particularly terrifying video included images of Hezbollah Secretary
02:24 General Hassan Nasrallah with crosshairs on his face and a series of gunshots.
02:28 This was followed by images of dead people meant to represent Hezbollah soldiers,
02:40 and a clip of Israeli forces raiding buildings in Lebanon. The war came to an end in August 2006,
02:46 after a ceasefire was brokered by the UN.
02:49 8. ART BELL AND THE FRANTIC AREA 51 CALLER
02:53 They are not what they claim to be.
02:57 As the host of the paranormal radio show, Coast to Coast AM, Art Bell's voice was heard in over
03:03 400 radio stations around the US. On September 11, 1997, Bell received a call from a distraught
03:10 man claiming to be a former employee of the nearby Area 51.
03:14 They're extra-dimensional beings that an earlier precursor of the space program made contact with.
03:24 The caller then details a reported contact with aliens,
03:27 and a conspiracy by the government to wipe out heavily populated areas.
03:31 I started getting…
03:34 Suddenly, the call goes off, and the show loses its transmission signal.
03:40 The abrupt disconnection raised questions about possible interference from the government.
03:44 Months later, another person phoned in claiming that he was the Area 51 caller,
03:48 and that it was all a prank. But the authenticity of this claim is still disputed.
03:53 Some of what I do is flat-out entertainment. I've never hidden that fact. Some of it is hard science.
04:00 7. MAYDAY INTERRUPTION
04:09 On January 3, 2007, an episode of the Canadian docuseries, Mayday, was airing on Australia's
04:16 Seven Network when the audio feed was suddenly interrupted by a terrifying message. For about
04:21 six minutes, a voice, in what appears to be an American accent, is heard saying,
04:26 "Jesus Christ, help us, Lord", repeatedly.
04:28 A representative for the Seven Network refuted claims of a signal intrusion,
04:38 and chalked it up to a technical glitch. According to them, the audio was part of the episode,
04:43 and actually said, "Jesus Christ, one of the Nazarenes". It was later discovered that the
04:48 audio came from an old videotaped broadcast from the Iraq War. However, it remains unclear how the
04:54 disturbing clip made its way into the Mayday episode. 6. IRANIAN STATE TV HIJACKED
05:08 The death of Masa Amini in September 2022, after her arrest by Iran's Morality Police,
05:13 sparked nationwide protests calling for an end to the country's regime, among other things.
05:17 On October 8, 2022, some protesters took their cause to the airwaves when they apparently hacked
05:23 into the live broadcast of the state-run TV channel. A group called Adelat Ali interrupted
05:28 the feed to display a message against Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. In the clip,
05:33 a target is placed on an image of Khamenei, along with statements that claim he has blood on his
05:38 hands. It also contained pictures of Amini and three other women who lost their lives during
05:43 the protests. 5. SOUTHERN TELEVISION BROADCAST INTERRUPTION
05:48 Could this be the work of aliens, or just a hoax perpetrated by some mischievous humans?
05:58 You be the judge. On November 26, 1977, an evening news broadcast on the UK's Southern
06:05 Television was hijacked and overridden by an unknown source. For approximately six minutes,
06:11 a distorted voice claiming to be Vrillon, a spokesperson of the Ashtar Galactic Command,
06:17 delivered a bizarre message. The cryptic figure
06:28 warned humanity about the dangers of war and the importance of living together in peace and
06:32 harmony. After the lengthy message had passed, the source terminated the transmission and all
06:37 was back to normal. The UK's Independent Broadcast Authority has since labelled the
06:42 incident a hoax, but the supposed perpetrator has never been identified.
06:55 4. KALUGA BROADCAST INTRUSION In the 1960s, two of the world's most
07:00 powerful nations came very close to nuclear war. Regarded as the Cuban Missile Crisis,
07:06 this thirteen-day period in 1962 marked a tense confrontation between the United States and the
07:11 Soviet Union over the deployment of Soviet nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba. This served
07:16 as the backdrop for a particularly dangerous broadcast intrusion in the city of Kaluga,
07:21 Russia. In 1966, a radio broadcast was suddenly interrupted with news that the US had engaged the
07:27 Soviet Union in nuclear war. Judging by the volatility of that period, this could have
07:32 easily set off a catastrophic conflict between both countries. Thankfully, authorities ultimately
07:38 learned that it was a hoax carried out by an eighteen-year-old. However, other broadcast
07:42 signal intrusions did continue in the Soviet Union over the next two decades.
07:47 3. ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE WARNING
07:49 In 2013, TV viewers in Montana must have thought that a zombie apocalypse was finally upon us.
08:00 During the airing of an episode of The Steve Wilkos Show on the local station KRTV,
08:04 a cryptic emergency alert began flashing across the screen. This was accompanied by a distorted
08:10 voice warning viewers of a horde of dead bodies rising and attacking people.
08:14 "Civil authorities in your area have reported that the bodies of the dead are rising from their
08:19 graves and attacking the living." The station quickly followed this up with a statement
08:23 confirming that they were hacked and that the claims were false. Similar hijacks occurred on
08:28 other stations, including in other states like Michigan. In this case, however, the hacker
08:32 responsible for the incidents was found and arrested by law enforcement. "Do not attempt
08:38 to approach or apprehend these bodies as they are considered extremely dangerous."
08:42 2. KNBC HOSTAGE SITUATION
08:45 "He saw us arriving, he put the gun down and said, 'I don't want to hurt anybody,' and that was it."
08:51 This terrifying incident occurred on August 19, 1987, when a man named Gary Stolman entered the
08:57 KNBC TV studio in Los Angeles and took a journalist hostage. Stolman pointed what looked like a gun at
09:04 consumer reporter David Horowitz and demanded that he read a handwritten statement live on air.
09:09 "I think by mail order, pardon me, what is this?"
09:14 At that moment, then-KNBC News Director Tom Capra immediately cut off the broadcast feed.
09:20 Once the statement had been read, Stolman revealed that he had been holding an air gun
09:24 and placed it on the news desk. Stolman, who was said to have been suffering mental health problems,
09:28 was swiftly arrested on felony charges. After about a seven-minute interruption,
09:33 the broadcast was restored. "He has been identified as Gary Stolman,
09:37 and he said he never intended to harm anyone. Indeed, the gun proved a fake."
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09:54 1. The Max Headroom Incident
10:01 "Oh, I just made a giant masterpiece for all the greatest world newspaper nerds."
10:06 This is sure to go down as the most disturbing hijacking in broadcast history.
10:13 On November 22nd, 1987, two local TV stations in the Chicago area were disrupted by an unknown
10:20 individual wearing a Max Headroom mask and costume. The first interruption occurred for
10:25 about seventeen seconds during the evening news on WGN-TV before the normal broadcast was restored.
10:31 Later that night, while an episode of Doctor Who aired on PBS affiliate WTTW, an individual in the
10:43 same mask appeared on the screen and engaged in bizarre behavior for about one minute and a half.
10:49 Despite an extensive investigation into the hijackings, the masked individual or individuals
10:55 were never identified, and the motives behind the incident remain unclear.
11:00 Late last night, as followers of the British TV fantasy series Doctor Who
11:03 watched an episode entitled "Horror of Fang Rock," they were startled by this.
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