Captain Midnight

On April 27, 1986, American electrical engineer and business owner John R. MacDougall jammed the Home Box Office (HBO) satellite signal on Galaxy 1 during a showing of the film The Falcon and the Snowman. The message, broadcast for four and a half minutes, was seen by the eastern half of the United States protesting HBO's rates for satellite dish owners, which he considered too expensive. MacDougall was working at his second job as an operations engineer at the Central Florida Teleport uplink station in Ocala, Florida, and vied with a technician at HBO's communications center in Hauppauge, Long Island, for control of the transmission. The technician attempted to increase uplink power but gave up because of the risk of damaging the satellite. MacDougall eventually abandoned his control of the satellite.