Captain Midnight was the alias for a satellite salesman who was at the heart of HBO's biggest TV piracy incident of the 1980's. Captain Midnight otherwise known as John MacDougall was a satellite salesman from Florida who became increasing frustrated with the inflating costs of pay per view television and decided to jam a live broadcast to put his own message across. At 12:32am on Sunday 27th April a 30% of HBO's viewers witnessed there televisions fade into a test screen pattern and the following generated characters appeared.
'GOOD EVENING HBO
FROM CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT
$12.95 A MONTH
NO WAY!
(SHOWTIME/MOVIE CHANNEL BEWARE)'
When asked about the nature of his intrusion he stated '"I didn't know exactly how to start it," he says. "I wrote 'Good evening." I wanted to be polite. I didn't want it to be vulgar or call them names or anything. That's not my style." This intervention was one of the first occasions whereby the viewer had actively changed the relationship with the broadcaster and the viewer and this changed what Marshall Mchluhan considered 'The Life of Forms'.
As the recession began to affect the general public towards the end of 2008 major TV programming agencies within the UK announced that there would be cuts in factual programming and a greater emphasis on entertainment programming. This shift in emphasis was hugely successful in relation to viewing figures and programs such as Strictly Come Dancing and Deal or No Deal, where exported globally and managed to pump 980million back into the UK economy. However, whether cutting peak times slots for cultural programming is positive for our country is my bone of contention.
Born out of a similar frustration with television networks, my ode to Captain Midnight loops a repetitive line from a 1970's cabaret version of the greatly bastardised 'Happy Days are Here Again' (A song written to inspire the American nation during the first national depression of 1928). I intend for this repetition to seep into the subconscious of the viewer and become increasingly irritating the longer they spend with the work. The 1970's cover of the original song originates from a Readers Digest television themes compilation
Whilst simultaneously broadcasting re-edited versions of our new found exports such as Deal Or No Deal whereby the only content I left in the broadcast is applause and cheering. Using a similar character generator to Captain Midnight, these videos are overlayed with the message 'happy days are her again'. These edited videos are broadcast wirelessly on the (soon to be defunct) terrestrial signal and can be picked up by any viewer in close proximity scanning the airwaves.
