Max Headroom (TV Series) - Impact On Society

Impact On Society

Max Headroom was the first cyberpunk series to run in the United States on one of the main broadcast networks in prime time, although it was not tagged with that label until some time after its cancellation. Like other science fiction, the series introduced the general public to new ideas in the form of cyberpunk themes and social issues. The series portrayed the Blanks, a counter-culture group of people who lived without any official numbers or documentation for the sake of privacy. Various episodes delved into issues like literacy and the lack thereof in a TV-dominated culture (for example, in the episode "Body Banks", Blank Reg says: "It's a book. It's a non-volatile storage medium. It's very rare. You should 'ave one." This statement also anticipates the mid-2000s controversy over the replacement of print by online and e-book sources.)

Of Max Headroom himself, actor Matt Frewer told Rolling Stone Magazine that "The cool thing about playing Max is that you can say virtually anything because theoretically the guy's not real, right? Can't sue a computer!"

The Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion incident involved someone dressed as Max Headroom interrupting the signals of Chicago television stations WGN and WTTW. The person or persons responsible were never identified.

In the late 1990s, U.S. cable TV channels Bravo and the Sci-Fi Channel re-ran the series. Reruns also briefly appeared on TechTV in 2001.