While MacDougall's motivations were seemingly clear, some within the media were concerned that the hijack was a form of domestic terrorism, with Showtime vice president Stephen Schultz deeming it as "video terrorism". He made a plea bargain that saw him be fined $5,000, be on unsupervised probation for a year, while also having his amateur radio license suspended for one year. Eventually, MacDougall surrendered to authorities, where he was charged with illegally operating a satellite uplink transmitter. Further, MacDougall was overheard confessing to the jamming on a payphone off Interstate 75 by a Wisconsin accountant. Following the intrusion, the FCC began a wide investigation to determine the culprit and narrowed their search down to three prime suspects, one of which was MacDougall. While other television hijackers, including those involved in the Southern Television broadcast intrusion and Max Headroom hijackings, would remain at large, MacDougall was not so lucky. As a further power increase could potentially have damaged Galaxy 1, HBO ended its control battle, with MacDougall shortly ending the pirate transmission out of concern of being caught. While this nearly overrode the intrusion, the effort to regain control was thwarted when MacDougall increased his power in response. The hijack itself lasted four-and-a-half minutes, although its duration was nearly cut short when an HBO technician increased his company's uplink transmission power from 125 to 2,000 watts. MacDougall had given himself the moniker of "Captain Midnight" in reference to the film On the Air Live with Captain Midnight. Thus, just as The Falcon and the Snowman was starting, the film was suddenly overridden by the following message: Once he was finished, he aimed Teleport's transmission dish towards the satellite Galaxy 1, which was transmitting the HBO signal. With no witnesses present, MacDougall began composing a message on a colour bar test pattern. Meanwhile, MacDougall was working at Central Florida Teleport, becoming the only engineer in attendance at 6 p.m. On 27th April, HBO were planning to air the film The Falcon and the Snowman. This intrusion would never have been reported to the FCC, were it not for the second one that occurred a week later. The incident was of seemingly little concern to HBO, as only a few select viewers were witnesses of this hijack. EST, MacDougall successfully hijacked the signal and replaced what was being televised with a colour bar test pattern for around three minutes before HBO increased its uplink transmission power to regain control. This station also provided uplinked services to satellites, which provided the means for him to jam HBO's signal. The HijacksĪside from running MacDougall Electronics, MacDougall was also working part-time at the Central Florida Teleport uplink station as an operations engineer. But when these fell on deaf ears, MacDougall opted for a more direct approach at challenging the situation. He and others, including the Satellite Television Industry Association, began protesting the necessity of keeping satellite services safe from excessive charges. MacDougall was therefore finding difficulty staying afloat, even switching off his air conditioning to save enough money. MacDougall's MacDougall Electronics, who was suffering from a decreased turnover once HBO scrambled its signal on 15th January 1986. The vast cost of investing for unscrambled programming led to a significant decline in satellite dishes being sold, putting many companies selling them out of business. This made viewing their channels impossible without buying an expensive descrambler, in addition to purchasing a monthly subscription of $12.95. In the mid-1980s, HBO and other pay television networks like Showtime and Movie Channel began to engage in satellite signal scrambling for their cable feeds.
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