Captain Midnight (HBO)

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Captain Midnight

Message seen in 1986
Date April 27, 1986
Location HBO
Participants John R. MacDougall
Outcome Fine and probation

John R. MacDougall (born c. 1961), also known as Captain Midnight, is a Florida electronic engineer and business owner who jammed HBO's satellite signal in April 1986 to broadcast a message protesting their rates for satellite dish owners.

Background

In the mid-1980s, controversy erupted in the cable programming world as media companies that owned pay television channels began scrambling their programming and charging fees to home satellite dish owners who accessed the same satellite signals that cable operators received. Many satellite dish owners were forced to purchase descrambling equipment at a cost of hundreds of dollars, in addition to paying monthly or annual subscription fees to cable programming providers. Programming costs for home dish owners were often higher than fees paid by cable subscribers, despite dish owners being responsible for owning and servicing their own equipment.

When HBO scrambled its signal, it offered subscriptions to home dish owners for $12.95 per month, which was either equal to or slightly higher than what cable subscribers paid. Dish owners felt they were being asked to pay a price that was designed to be anti-competitive, and it triggered a national movement among dish owners to more strongly regulate the cable industry and force them to stop anti-competitive pricing. While some dish owners called their elected officials, others took a more direct approach to send a message to the large industry.

Jamming

On April 27, 1986 at 12:32 a.m. Eastern Time, John R. MacDougall, a satellite television dealer in Ocala, Florida, was working at Central Florida Teleport, a company that uplinks services to satellites. He was overseeing the uplink of the movie Pee-wee's Big Adventure as part of the evening's programming for the now-defunct pay-per-view network People's Choice (which used Central Florida Teleport's facilities). At the end of his shift, he swung the dish back into its storage position, which aimed it at the location of Galaxy 1, the satellite that carried HBO. As a protest against the introduction of high fees and scrambling equipment, he transmitted a signal onto the satellite which overrode HBO's telecast of the movie The Falcon and the Snowman for 4½ minutes.[1] The text message which appeared on the sets of HBO subscribers across the eastern half of the country read:

“
GOODEVENING HBO
FROM CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT
$12.95/MONTH ?
NO WAY !
[SHOWTIME/MOVIE CHANNEL BEWARE!]
 ”

Aftermath

MacDougall chose the name "Captain Midnight" from a movie he had recently seen, On the Air Live with Captain Midnight (not associated with a popular Captain Midnight radio show of the 1940s). After media pressure forced the Federal Communications Commission to act, MacDougall was charged and plea bargained a $5,000 fine and was placed on one year's probation.

To this day, MacDougall still owns and operates MacDougall Electronics, a satellite dish dealership, in Ocala, Florida.[2]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "The Story of Captain Midnight". Archived from the original on 2007-01-28. Retrieved 2007-08-03. 
  2. ↑ "John R. MacDougall Bio". Archived from the original on 2008-03-18. Retrieved 2010-03-16. 

External links

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