Southern Television - 26/11/1977

Just stumbled across this on YT. Does anybody have any idea on what it is? It appears to be a garbled mess during what appears to be a news report.

Slightly odd to say the least...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Iw641Ha4R4

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Television_broadcast_interruption

Yes, a very famous case of hacking the airwaves which often pops up in Strange But True-style programmes. I have a sneaky suspicion that the clip is a mock up though.

The You Tube clip is b0llO3ks. The actual programme interrupted was the Saturday tea time ITN news, and a cartoon. The You Tube clip shows Cliff Michelmore, who didn't even join Southern TV until 1980, and Day by Day was a weekday evening show anyway.

Here's a genuine clip of the audio:-
http://tx.mb21.co.uk/gallery/hannington/spacemessage-offair.mp3

Also has recordings of apologies and news reports reporting on the event from 06:00

How susceptible were transmitters back then to this sort of thing? Surely it couldn't happen in this day and age?

It was easy to do, on any transmitter that received its feed via off air reception of another, which back in the analogue days was every relay station, and about 20 or so 'secondary grade' main stations, such as Hannington, Craigkelly, Sudbury, Chatton.

Today, with DTT all main stations, and major relay sites are fed by fibre optic landlines, or digital radio links.
About 1000 relays are still off air fed for a main station (or another relay) but to perform the same trick
you'd need to replicate exactly the transport stream of the feed transmission.

However, FM radio relay sites (and some main ones) are fed off air, they can still be easily hijacked, indeed Whitehawk Hill in Brighton was about 10 years ago.

It's thought the same group that did the 1977 ITV hijack, also hi jacked a few months later
the Radio 2 transmitter at Rowridge (the main TV and radio site that serves the south coast)
Back then Radio 2 was fed by off air FM reception of Wrotham (the site that serves London and the SE)
Same trick, they zapped it with a signal on the same frequency as R2 Wrotham, and played an hour's worth
of BBC banned records

Didn't they later introduce an arrangement whereby the RBL source had to have certain things in the VBI otherwise the transmitter would just shut down (or go to RBS)?

Yes, 23 kHz tones on audio, and as you say VBI idents. That would have made the main station hijacking
far more difficult, but wouldn't have protected the 1100 or so relays, (as they were just dumb transposers that
radiated whatever they received) The C5 Cambridge relay at Madingly rebroadcast BBC 1 Hannington for a hour or so once, when that signal overpowered (due to freak reception conditions) the wanted feed service on the same frequency from Sandy Heath

I've heard that audio clip before and it makes me wonder who would have recorded it. Possibly the people that did the hacking?

Quite possibly !! A few weeks after the incident, a fake job advert appeared in Wireless World,
for a post at the IBA for head of transmission security. It was a quarter page box, with the IBA's logo,
and Crawley Court's phone number and address, very authentically done.

The whole thing (including the Radio 2 hi jack, if that was the same group) was a very cleverly executed
stunt !!

From 1987, here's a news report about a very famous Chicago hijacking involving two stations (one of them showing Dr. Who at the time):

Back in the days when BBC Bristol made a joint political programme for the West and South regions, transmitted on Sundays on BBC 2, apparrently Hannington transmitter frequently refused to transmit it and went to rebroadcast mode of Crystal Palace instead of carrying the opt from Bristol (normally it would carry opts from Southampton).