For years prior to 1986, satellite dish owners were able to watch HBO for free, a channel that cost cable owners $8.95 a month. This workaround angered channel executives so much that they petitioned Congress to allow them to scramble their signal in 1984. They were successful, and starting in 1985, HBO required a descrambler box to view their programming. Not only that, but satellite owners had to pay $12.95 a month to watch HBO, a full $4 more than cable owners. This greatly angered John R. MacDougall, who owned a satellite business, MacDougall Electronics, in Ocala, Florida. After this change, MacDougall saw great declines in his business’s income, so much so that he had to get a second job at Central Florida Teleport, where he operated the satellite uplinks for cable providers. It was there that he finally decided that he had enough and that he wanted to send HBO a message.

35 years ago this week, on Sunday, April 27, 1986, MacDougall set up a color bar pattern and pulled up a character generator. He took a few minutes to compose his message. “Good evening HBO”, he began, wanting to be as polite as possible. He chose to identify himself under the moniker of “Captain Midnight”, which was inspired by a film he had recently seen, On the Air With Captain Midnight. In the film, a man runs a pirate radio station under the name Captain Midnight, which becomes very popular. After finalizing his message, MacDougall swung his transmission dish in the direction of Galaxy 1, the satellite that carried HBO. At around 12:32 AM, he transmitted the signal onto the satellite, overriding HBO’s broadcast of the 1985 film The Falcon and the Snowman. Almost immediately, technicians at HBO noticed and tried to put an end to MacDougall’s broadcast. They increased the power of their signal in an attempt to override Captain Midnight’s intrusion. MacDougall, in response, increased his power, and the two essentially played a game of tug-of-war until they reached 2000 watts, at which point the HBO technicians gave up. 

The hijacking lasted around four and a half minutes. That was enough time to cause a panic at HBO and Hughes Communications (the owners of the Galaxy 1 satellite). They both feared the intrusion as an act of domestic terrorism. MacDougall felt satisfied, knowing his message got out to over 14 million viewers on the east coast, and the attention of the executives he despised. He shut down his broadcast and went home for the night. The next day, the FCC started an investigation into the hijacking. They would soon conclude that the pirate signal originated from an uplink facility, and Central Florida Teleport was on the shortlist. MacDougall began to feel very guilty about the incident, especially since it made national headlines, but nonetheless kept a low profile. That summer, however, he would make a mistake that led to his arrest. A tourist from Wisconsin overhead MacDougall bragging about the hijacking at a payphone in a rest area off Interstate 75 in Gainesville, Florida. He copied MacDougall’s license plate number and reported him to the authorities.

MacDougall would be visited by two FCC agents and a US attorney named Lawrence Gentile III. MacDougal was handed a subpoena to appear in US District Court. Although he insisted throughout the meeting that he did not commit any crimes, he agreed to appear in court. If convicted, MacDougall would be facing a potential $100,000 fine and up to a year in prison. On July 22, he pleaded guilty to the charge of “illegally operating a satellite uplink transmitter”. He would plea bargain, and in turn received a $5,000 fine, a year of unsupervised probation, and a one year suspension of his amateur radio license. While Captain Midnight was an enemy of the FCC, FBI, and HBO, he was also seen by the public as a sort of geeky folk hero. He was dubbed a “Reagan-era Robin Hood” by AV Club. The Captain Midnight Grassroots Cause was a group that formed to assist MacDougall with his legal fees by selling merchandise inspired by the incident. After all the attention he received died down, MacDougall returned to work at MacDougall Electronics, which he still owns and operates to this day. In fact, his website proudly displays the fact that he was Captain Midnight.

MacDougall reflected on the incident in a 2011 interview with Network World, “I do not regret trying to get the message out to corporate America about unfair pricing and restrictive trade practices,” he said, “That was the impetus for doing what I did, that’s the reason why I jammed HBO; that’s the reason I sent them a polite message. What I do regret is that I was young and fairly naïve in the ways of the media. I didn’t grasp the fact that no one understood my motives and that everyone would make assumptions. Had I known that upfront I would have been much more fervent in explaining my motivations. I had no animus and I had no malice in my heart.”