The Southern Television broadcast interruption was a broadcast signal intrusion, or pirate broadcast, that occurred on 26 November 1977 in parts of southern England in the United Kingdom. The audio of a Southern Television broadcast was replaced by a voice claiming to represent the "Ashtar Galactic Command", delivering a message instructing humanity to abandon its weapons and live in peace with one another so it could participate in a "future awakening" and "achieve a higher state of evolution". After five and a half minutes, the broadcast returned to its scheduled programme.
Subsequent investigations showed that the Hannington transmitter of the Independent Broadcasting Authority had rebroadcast the signal from a small but nearby unauthorised transmitter, instead of the intended source at Rowridge transmitting station. The event prompted hundreds of telephone calls from concerned members of the public, and was widely reported in British and American newspapers. These reports are sometimes contradictory, including differing accounts of the name used by the speaker, the organisation they claimed to represent, and the wording of the message.
Event
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At 5:10 p.m. GMT on Saturday 26 November 1977, ITN's Ivor Mills presented a news summary on developments in the Rhodesian Bush War in present-day Zimbabwe. For viewers who received their TV sound signal from the Hannington television transmitter, the audio of the broadcast was interrupted and replaced by a deep buzz, followed by a distorted male voice delivering a message for almost four minutes. The speaker claimed to be Vrillon, a representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command, and claimed that the earth had only a short time to disarm and learn to live in peace. The name "Ashtar" and the idea of an "Ashtar Command" had been associated with extraterrestrial communication since the 1950s, when UFO contactee George Van Tassel claimed to have received a message from Ashtar, and others subsequently claimed to be able to channel the Ashtar Command.
The interruption ceased shortly after the statement had been delivered, with transmissions returning to normal shortly after the beginning of the 1947 Merrie Melodies cartoon The Goofy Gophers. After the cartoon had ended, Southern Television, which had been unaware of the interruption at the time and only learned of it when viewers began to call in, apologised for the interference in sound experienced by some viewers. ITN also reported on the incident in its own late-evening Saturday bulletin.
According to the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), the interruption was the first of this kind in the country.
Transcript
A complete transcript of the message reads:
Investigation and explanation
An investigation into the incident was launched by police, the Post Office, which had been granted statutory powers in regulating the use of radio frequencies by the 1949 Wireless Telegraphy Act, and the Independent Broadcasting Authority, which owned the transmitter. A spokesman for Southern Television confirmed the explanation: "A hoaxer jammed our transmitter in the wilds of North Hampshire by taking another transmitter very close to it."
Had the perpetrator(s) been caught, they could have been fined up to £200 under the Wireless Telegraphy Act.
Public and media response
The incident caused some local alarm; Southern Television received hundreds of phone calls from worried viewers after the intrusion. The Winchester police received more than 50 people calls from people dialling the UK emergency telephone number to report the incident. or as "Asteron". and others reporting (following the United Press International report) that the speaker warned that Earth would have to "leave the galaxy" if it did not learn to live in peace. Speaking on British commercial radio on 6 December 1977, Sir John Whitmore questioned such reporting of the incident, suggesting that claims that the message was threatening and frightening were projections by the newspapers, rather than present in the original message itself.
The broadcast became a footnote in ufology as some chose to accept the broadcast at face value. By as early as 1985, the story had entered urban folklore, with suggestions there had never been any explanation of the broadcast.
A 1999 episode of children's television series It's a Mystery, coincidentally produced by one of Southern's successors, Meridian Broadcasting, re-enacted the incident with faux news reports and viewers watching the incident play out at home.
See also
- Captain Midnight broadcast signal intrusion
- Max Headroom signal hijacking