MacDougall, working at Central Florida Teleport at the time, took advantage of one of the facility’s satellite dishes.

It was a protest against HBO’s scrambling of their signal (which forced home dish viewers to buy expensive descrambling equipment) and their monthly subscription fee of $12.95. Captain Midnight, interrupted the HBO broadcast of The Falcon and the Snowman with a color test pattern and a simple message :

In the early morning of April 27, 1986, John R.