Amory: Over on PBS you had some serious masterpiece theater nerdery happening. "[5] The pirate broadcast ended when the hijackers unilaterally ended their transmission. Urbane! The Max Headroom-impersonator, meanwhile, remains at large. It appears to be gibberish, but it could be a coded message. If your power is quite a bit stronger than the desired signal, then you'll override the desired signal and your signal will go out instead. Bowie: Rick has a point about the dangers of speaking in absolutes, but, from what we’ve gathered, I’d still say it’s basically zero, even now. Rick is the chief curator of an online museum of classic Chicago television, and he has a copy of the Max Headroom broadcast intrusion — the highest quality copy, he claims. L' interferenza di Max Headroom (in inglese Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion incident), fu un atto di intrusione nel segnale di broadcast, accaduto a Chicago la sera del 22 novembre 1987, quando un uomo, con indosso una maschera del personaggio di Max Headroom riuscì ad interrompere i programmi due emittenti televisive nell'arco di due ore. As a reporter who got interested decades after the thing happened, it’s pretty safe to say he was not directly involved. Ha ha,” He says, holding up a dildo. You know, I think that there's there's something poetic about that. Ben: FCC spokesperson Phil Bradford went on TV at the time and said this. Max Headroom became a cultural icon of the 1980’s, and it changed the way a lot of people think about traditional media. Amory: And it starts out the same way. Jim: Actually, you just you just explained it probably in the simplest way. Besides this I also was able to use my Museum as a “cover” for inquiries, since I would often reach out to people who may have saved old tapes. And they were both inspired by this hacker prankster subculture. Max Headroom is considered to be “the first computer-generated TV personality”. Ben: And spoiler, this is not one we have solved either, yet. Gotta love that public media baby. Max Headroom in his heyday. He talked all about the involvement with New Coke, he talked about an old TV series from the ‘60s called Clutch Cargo and ripped on WGN sports news anchor Chuck Swirsky. Rick: Bowie can address this better probably but another reason was possible negative reaction from the hacking community, such as doxing, etc. Unfortunately the WGN digs and references didn’t make much sense, but Max probably felt like he didn’t want to be beaten and switched to WTTW just because he could. Our username is. I think I underestimated how interested the public would be in what I had to share with regard to the Reddit AMA. Where, during primetime television hours, something truly weird happened. L' incident Max Headroom désigne le piratage d'un signal télévisé ayant eu lieu le 22 novembre 1987, à Chicago, aux États-Unis, réalisé par au moins deux individus inconnus. Hard to say for sure. One of the areas Chris focused on was the tech needed to pull off a stunt like this. I’m tryna do a show here! What about the Playboy TV hack or Captain Midnight, Rick: The Playboy and Captain Midnight things were satellite hacks and so didn’t interest me as much since it wasn’t strictly on a local channel. It’s helpful to show that we take others’ privacy seriously, if we expect to have people come forward with what they know. That said, I would enjoy finding an off-air recording of the cable stations that the two hacks appeared on, so the thing could be preserved and seen in their entirety. When the sportscaster comes back on, he is bewildered. There were growing concerns about terrorism and extremism more generally. And then a woman showed up, also in a mask, to spank him repeatedly with a fly swatter. Bowie did a very thorough technical analysis of the videotape of the incident which yielded a major piece of information. Amory: Did you ever fear for your safety? The one person whose name was yelled out by the masked people hijacking television broadcasts in Chicago on November 22nd, 1987. Why are there subjects you can’t go into at this point in time? But when he stumbled upon YouTube videos of the broadcast interruption at two in the morning one night in 2012, he became obsessed. Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. My name is Chris Knittel. (Ben recites the commercial at the same time), Ben: Dennis Weaver is Buck James, Sunday on ABC. And I have found multiple sources. You also wrote, “there are a few subjects we can’t really go into at this point in time.” Which subjects are those (even if you can’t speak about them in detail)? Amory: That was just the first of two signal intrusions that night, 32 years ago to the day, that we are publishing this episode. Ben: McDougal got turned in by a guy who overheard him bragging about his stunt. Don't hesitate to reach out with reactions to episodes, ideas for future stories, feedback about the show, or just to say hi. We had narrowed the range of focus before that, but the anonymous tip line e-mail was the thing that really sparked it all off. Ben: So, when some masked marauders took over 90 seconds of TV time in the major market of Chicago in 1987 it looked, and felt more than anything, like a prank. Amory: Funny to a kid maybe, because the second intrusion got real weird. Amory: Also, maybe you can help us find some answers. Ben Brock Johnson: Amory, do you remember the year 1987? In the years since, Redditors have played an integral role in getting to the bottom of this case. It’s someone in a mask, an oversized head with sunglasses, square chin, white teeth, blond slicked back hair. Amory: You win in the contest of who is older, congratulations. Back in 1987, his job was also in sports. Alex Pasternak: Hackers were starting to gain notoriety as as criminals. No one has. Chuck: Well I was sports director at WGN Radio in Chicago, doing college basketball for DePaul University, the Cubs Radio Network, Bears Radio Network, Northwestern Football. Rick: Who we believe Max may have been and how they may have done it. We want to hear from you! When I grew up, and where I grew up, no one I knew had a videotape recorder. In part by focusing on the bizarre contents of the video itself. Amory: Chris feels like, in a way, this story is an aspirational legend for hackers of the day and hackers now. We also noticed in certain frames where the edge of the rotating background is visible, that the stripes themselves seem to extend and hang limp off the edge a little. Chuck: After that clip played, I received calls from radio, television stations, not only in Chicago, but across the United States. We dig into the story. [17], Not long after the incident, WMAQ-TV humorously inserted clips of the hijacking into a newscast during Mark Giangreco's sports highlights. And heads up, they’re almost impossible to understand. Come on.” I thought it was a practical joke! Ben: Hey, I bet Chuck Swirsky is just glad all those sirens weren’t singing his name. No offense, but you guys are being very cagey! When and why did you decide to conduct your own investigation into the Max Headroom case? It was a fiasco. We spoke to Chuck Swirsky who says he did not have any notable “enemies” and has no idea why anyone would call him a “fricken nerd” and a “fricken liberal?” Do you guys have any guesses, educated or otherwise? . Why shouldn’t people suspect you? And apparently, this may have influenced the effectiveness of the Headroom investigation. -A Reddit post with some theories on the Max Headroom Incident  -Bowie Poag's Reddit post with his original "J and K" theory, -Chris Knittel and Alex Pasternak's article "The Mystery of the Creepiest Television Hack.". They’ve since joined forces in an amateur investigation of the incident. You know, it's an urban legend. And it’s great to have you all back with me again. But I think my sense is that like they were performing, they were doing something that was that was meant to be, in some ways, a work of art. Max’s mention of Chuck seems to be only done in passing. Just tell the folks a little bit about what you are, what you do. And he also sounded computer generated. You can find more of his work HERE . So! Although perhaps the next line about being a liberal was directed at Swirsky. The strangeness and creepiness of it takes on more meaning as time goes by. For fun, on Reddit, I took a couple days off from work to sit down and see what I could extract out of it, and actually managed to emerge something meaningful after the first day or so. No way! As for why people shouldn’t suspect us…well, there’s the obvious.. Rick and I didn’t know each other when we were kids, but we were both barely 13 in November of 1987, and I was living way out in the suburbs when the Headroom incidents happened. What is it? Saying that he no longer considered J and K, the two brothers, suspects, this was due to new evidence he found in his own investigation — new evidence he won’t share publicly. I’ve been feeling the urge to take a few days off of work to try and solve that one, too. There was a homemade Max Headroom background that was being rocked around as the hacker spoke and he talked in a distorted voice. And with great difficulty, under all the noise, you could hear the Max Headroom imposter mention the name of Chuck Swirsky— a WGN Radio guy who filled in … By 1987, Max Headroom the brand had gone through its own transformation. Amory: And no offense to Chuck or other sportscasters here, Chuck was, and maybe is, a bit of a normie? Alex: The signal intruders may not have had enough time to say everything they wanted to. Chris: To me, his story on Reddit just sort of a kind of supercharged the mystery, you know, and kind of inspired people to go down their own rabbit holes. Bowie also did research into other technical aspects of the hack which he was able to confirm with my help. And with great difficulty, under all the noise, you could hear the Max Headroom imposter mention the name of Chuck Swirsky— a WGN Radio guy who filled in … And they must have some sort of code that they decided to live by. ? On a late-November evening in 1987, two Chicago television stations were victims of a broadcast signal intrusion. It captures the minds of people who want answers, including people on Reddit. I’m also glad to have made a new friend in Rick along the way, too. How about Chuck Swirsky, the sportscaster? [9][1][10] The entire incident lasted for about 28 seconds and was cut off when engineers at WGN changed the frequency of the signal linking the broadcast studio to the station's transmitter atop the John Hancock Center. Ben: Okay, what about Chris, who wrote thousands of words on this story? Chuck: People started asking me, “Well, so in the upcoming election, who are you who are you taking in 1988?” You know, “What are your views on this, this and this?” You know, I just want to be a guy, you know, just a guy on the street. Rick, what type of presence does Max Headroom have in the museum? Some sort of ongoing work dispute. There are a few ways to reach us: This content was originally created for audio. It is an example of what is known in the television business as broadcast signal intrusion. The Max Headroom broadcast intrusions were a series of break-ins to two television stations in Chicago by a man imitating and wearing a mask of the character Max Headroom, as well as mocking political figures and the networks he hijacked on November 22, 1987. We got all kinds of calls about it," said Giangreco. Frickin’ Liberal. I was not alive. Ben: Did that contribute to the challenges with the case? How collaborative was it and how much did you each do individually? The investigation such as it was didn’t really begin in earnest until Bowie and I started talking about it and sharing info and clues. What was the significance of the Headroom incident back in 1987? Here’s this guy named Rick who had been working a completely different angle to mine, which I found interesting, so, we began to share notes over the next few years, and casually looking into things where we still could. Phil Bradford: It is very serious and we’d like to inform anybody who is involved in this type of thing that it is serious and that we will take every step that we can to find out who is doing it. Ben: Which, appropriate, because it happens during the BBC science fiction show, Dr. Who. I think most people get it, and respect that we’re trying to do the right thing here. It's a myth. Then he held up a can of Pepsi while reciting the Coca-Cola slogan “catch the wave.” Max Headroom was, at the time, being used as a spokesperson for Coke. Which includes a parody of a Coke commercial, with the perpetrator throwing a Pepsi can…, Ben: Also, a rendition of the theme song for the animated show Clutch Cargo…. The video ended with the person's exposed buttocks being spanked by a woman with a flyswatter before normal programming resumed. Catch the wave. I don't even — honestly, it takes me assistance to move pictures to a photo album on my computer. A person disguised under a Max Headroom Halloween mask hijacked the WTTW PBS airwaves. Ah, make it stop!" So, as an employee of WGN, he wasn’t watching his company’s TV station when, during the nine o’clock news, the broadcast was hijacked. Aliens: We come to warn you of the destiny of your race. And there were these really funny ads. Ben: In his original inception in 1984, Max was pretty alternative. [12], That same night at about 11:20pm, the signal of local PBS station WTTW was interrupted during an airing of the Doctor Who serial Horror of Fang Rock. So, to test out the theory that the background was something like electrical tape on cardboard rather than corrugated metal, we went out and bought a couple rolls of electrical tape, and spray-painted a large piece of cardboard white, and laid out the stripes in the same pattern. Bigfooting stuff. The announcer was talking about the Chicago Bears game. Bowie: Mainly those, yes. Amory: Whatever his feelings about politics, Chuck had been thrust into the spotlight in a broadcast signal hack. ", Send us a direct message on Reddit. Ben: Chris did have a theory though. And at the time, broadcast intrusions felt like they could become a part of that. And then the scene cuts out again and the screen goes black. Amory: Which we learned, in part, from one of the only deep dive pieces of journalism produced about this incident, from a reporter named Chris. His voice would like pitch shift and stutter randomly. I think it boils down to people having natural desire to resolve or explain things that seem unresolved. El Incidente Max Headroom fue una señal intrusa de televisión que tuvo lugar en Chicago, Illinois en la noche del domingo 22 de noviembre de 1987.Es un ejemplo de lo que se conoce en el negocio de la televisión como intrusión en emisión de señal. Also the mask. (laughing, or moaning). Amory: We’re coming to you from WBUR, Boston’s NPR station. Ben: But then the person in the mask, starts talking. Combine this with an even further pre-existing interest / attraction to things like garbage picking (such as when a neighbor down the street threw a whole ton of records out next to his garbage cans), collecting in general, flea markets and Maxwell street, it all came together. Max Headroom experimentou um sucesso considerável durante os anos 80, chegando inclusive a protagonizar propagandas da Coca-Cola. The screen switches to someone in a strange mask, lunging at the camera while a piece of corrugated metal spins behind them. We don’t want to disappoint anyone, but for now, there are still people who’ve simply chosen privacy over publicity, and we have to honor that. Amory: And you will not be shocked to learn that Reddit did move the ball forward a bit. Rick: For a long time it was the most viewed clip on the main site as well as the YouTube page. "[15] Air director Paul Rizzo recalled that "as the content got weirder we got increasingly stressed out about our inability to do anything about it. I’ll just point out that I prefer not to speak in absolutes as much as Bowie, so I wouldn’t say the possibility is basically zero, but I would qualify it by simply stating that it is extremely unlikely. Jim: That's actually, now that you've mentioned that, that might have been something that I remember now hearing from our Chicago guys. On Superior Court ... and then he started to unzip my jeans… Nutritious foods like Campbell’s Soup can help keep your resistance up. Beyond that, there’s a fair number of people who don’t even want it solved; they’d prefer it to be something like a landmark, which is understandable. They both grew up in Chicago and witnessed the hack live when they were 13 years old. The brain is uploaded to the network. [11], Upon returning to the airwaves, WGN sports anchor Dan Roan commented, "Well, if you're wondering what's happened, so am I",[1] and joked that the computer running the news "took off and went wild". He said that he did have what he thought was a credible idea of where they broadcasted [sic] their transmission, where they sent their signal out. CBS News anchor: Now to this story. You can stop people in the middle of the rat race. Amory: Part of the reason for a lack of evidence might be this tension that apparently existed between the FCC’s national and regional offices. Ben: Whether or not "Swirsk" understood the point of Max Headroom, his world really was flipped upside down. It was a hostile takeover. [18], According to Motherboard, the incident became an influential "cyberpunk hacking trope". Amory: In the decades since the incident, the mainstream has moved on. Amory: This is what investigators focused on, too. He’s a frickin’ nerd. Chuck Swirsky (born January 30, 1954) is an American-Canadian radio sports announcer. That’s all we really ask of anybody. Alex: By that point, he had become a television pitchman. The intruder – a man with a rubber Max Headroom mask – would speak this time, though the signal would be highly distorted. He’s a frickin’ nerd. I mean, I really couldn't relate to him. McDougal hacked the delivery system and put up a message for viewers that said... "Good evening HBO from Captain Midnight. The culprit was the same Max Headroom impersonator, this time speaking with distorted audio. It’s always been pretty casual. Max Headroom Hacker: (sings) Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo. Coke Commercial: Catch it if you can, can. It was a daring move. Amory: In 1986, HBO was in the process of changing its delivery technology. To my knowledge, I don’t think we ever unearthed any real reason why anyone would have a problem with Chuck Swirsky. We still disagree on some things and we aren’t absolutely sure about anything – but we are very confident in what we do know. The first of two intrusion took place during the sports segment of a live broadcast of WGN-TV's The Nine O'Clock News. While speculation at the time suggested the hijacking was a form of protest or even a … Chris Knittel: Hello. Home viewers' screens went black for about 15 seconds, then displayed the image of a person wearing a Max Headroom mask and sunglasses rocking erratically in front of a rotating corrugated metal panel that mimicked the real Max Headroom's geometric background effect accompanied by a staticky buzzing sound. (still in the top 5 at least I believe) It fits right in since besides more normal elements we also like to preserve moments that are even more ephemeral – technical difficulties, special bulletins, on screen crawls, weather alerts, stuff that only happened once – so this definitely fits that category. Rick: Yep, that was one of the first things I uploaded to YouTube, although not the first thing, in 2006. So we asked Rick and Bowie if they were involved. Make the audience look up from their dead end jobs, snap out of their TV-watching zombie state.” You can culture jam. Like, a lot of calls. It was bold. The man in the Max Headroom mask called out a WGN commentator, Chuck Swirsky, whom he referred to … He — presuming it was a he under the rubber — declared that local sports broadcaster Chuck Swirsky was a "fricking liberal." One of a short list of similar takeovers that seemed to be growing in number in the mid 1980s, looked at by some as a new form of terrorism. The Max Headroom Incident On the evening of November 22nd, 1987, an oddly-dressed man appeared on two Chicago-based TV stations. Ben: Amory, what is the equivalent of this incident in 2019 or 2020? A Reddit post with some theories on the Max Headroom Incident, Bowie Poag's Reddit post with his original "J and K" theory, Chris Knittel and Alex Pasternak's article "The Mystery of the Creepiest Television Hack. Amory: Even though it's just basically like gibberish, there's no clear message that we're supposed to take away from it? David Letterman: I tell you what, Max, could you describe yourself for us? The Max Headroom Intro: The Max Headroom-m-m story. That’s right, I think I’m better than Chuck Swirsky, frickin’ liberal.”. We both did “in the field” reconnaissance and information gathering (if you want to call it that) where I put a little extra on the line in order to get info and evidence, but in the end it was mostly a collaborative effort. But they'd also been born in this world of hobbyists and pranksters. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text. Max Headroom is a British fictional artificial intelligence (AI) character, known for his wit and stuttering, electronically altered voice. The hacker made references to Max Headroom’s endorsement of Coca-Cola, the TV series Clutch Cargo, WGN anchor Chuck Swirsky; and “all the best world newspaper nerds”, a regard to WGN’s call letters, which represent “World’s Greatest Newspaper”. Oh, Jesus! It's called "The Max Headroom Incident." [16] The station was able to find copies of the incident with the help of Doctor Who fans who had been taping the show. Rick: Well, we had a few tips come from my “tip line”. Wayne Larabie called it like this on WGN radio…, Ben: Everything’s going along normally, and then right in the middle of the announcer’s description of the game, while the football newsreel played…, WGN Announcer: Then the defense, which hadn’t put up a sack in 12 quarters finally di---. So we need to get a feel for the year 1987. But what is his take on who was responsible? «Io sono meglio di Chuck Swirsky», ha detto Max, «Chuck Swirsky è un pazzoide liberale» Credo di sapere perché questa vicenda, seppur banale, mi … And his brain is preserved by his hacker friend. Due to a combination of technical difficulties and a WGN engineer who took evasive action, the hack was stopped in its tracks. [5][6][7][8], The unidentified hijacker dressed to resemble, Southern Television broadcast interruption, Captain Midnight broadcast signal intrusion, "The Mystery of the Creepiest Television Hack", "Techno-Ethics and Tele-Ethics: Three Lives in the Day of Max Headroom", "30 Years Later, Notorious 'Max Headroom Incident' Remains a Mystery", "30 years later, Max Headroom hijack mystery remains unsolved", "Thirty years later, "Max Headroom" TV pirate remains at large", "Television's Most Infamous Hack Is Still a Mystery 30 Years Later", "Remember, Remember the 22nd of November", "A powerful video prankster could become Max Jailroom", "WTTW Channel 11 – Doctor Who – 'The Max Headroom Pirating Incident' (1987)", "Casting final look at '87 // Local sportscasters recall year's memorable events", "The Freakiest TV Hack of the 1980s: Max Headroom", "Bogus 'Max Headroom' Interrupts Broadcasts On 2 Chicago Stations", Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, List of culture jamming organizations and people, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Max_Headroom_signal_hijacking&oldid=1015317412, November 1987 events in the United States, Television controversies in the United States, Articles with unsourced statements from November 2019, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 31 March 2021, at 19:50. Talented! He was introduced in early 1985. Amory: You better get a LOT better at computers. Chuck: Absolutely not. Amory: He looked like a news program talking head, that floated in this computer generated cube. And we discussed, you know, what kind of equipment it probably would have taken to do that. Max said that he was better than Chuck who he called a “frickin’ liberal.” He went on to hold up a Pepsi can and say, “Catch the Wave,” which was the slogan for New Coke. Ben: Well, that was over 30 years ago and it still hasn’t happened, Amory, so I think we’re safe for now. I don’t think it was meant to be creepy, but it came off that way, which certainly adds to it. Are you connected to the perpetrators of the Headroom incident in any way? "By the time our people began looking into what was going on, it was over," said Yocom. This character was and still is a pop culture icon. What followed was 90 seconds of the Max Headroom impersonator making fun of WGN anchor Chuck Swirsky, Max Headroom's ill-fated "New Coke" advertisements, giving the finger with a rubber extension, as well as mocking Chicago's newspaper, Clutch Cargo, and putting on a glove then claiming his brother has the other one. On November 22, 1987, two TV stations in Chicago had their broadcast signals hijacked by someone wearing a Max Headroom mask. Laws were being changed in the 1980s to make intrusions like this a felony. Fine. Today’s episode…. Alex Pasternack says both Max and the incident itself connected to the rise of hacker culture. And it still has never been solved. Ben: In 1966, a radio broadcast intrusion in a Soviet Union city claimed nuclear war had broken out with the United States. That’s part of what makes this whole thing even more cyberpunk when the signal intrusion has happened. The first incident took place during the sports segment of WGN-TV's 9:00 p.m. news broadcast and lasted about 25 seconds. They swore up and down that they were not. "Reporter: 'So what did you think about the whole thing?' Rick: It was just a weird little mostly humorous event of a now by-gone era of analog television. It’s also why this story continues to come back to life periodically. Bowie: Yeah.. Ben: It was not a computer glitch. So they took some advice, but they didn't take all of the advice. Though they are the keepers of some secrets — things they say they just won’t go into. Is it some crazy Netflix takeover move that we haven’t even seen yet? With an old camera and light source in the right position, sure enough, it seems to have the same properties as what we see in the video, dog ears and all. It’s a dare — a way to say, “See what you can do? Ben: Thank you very much. Kid: 'Very, very funny.'". Rick, you opened up a Max Headroom tip line at some point. Reddit is good at solving mysteries. Amory, you remember Max Headroom, yeah? News Broadcaster: The incidents are now under investigation by the FCC and the FBI. After calling out Chuck Swirsky, the person in the Max Headroom mask, who appeared to be a man, also pulled down his pants revealing his bare … Who knows. Amory: Yeah. But, you know, it's folklore. Are you withholding information that could potentially lead to the identification of the perpetrators of the Headroom incident? Ben: If you were in Chicago and flipping through TV channels in 1987, you would find a range of stuff. Chris: I don't know the answer to that because I don't know if I want it to be solved. Part of his character portrayal is that he is comprised of artificial intelligence. Rick: I think the Max perpetrator hid their tracks very well, to the point that even if they were a suspect, as long as they held firm under questioning, there would be no hard evidence to move forward. You know, I wasn't so involved in that piece. Where did the footage you uploaded come from and why did you upload it? But the subversives remember. The max headroom broadcast intrusion is one set at the center stage of cable television’s influence. It's culture jamming, you know, sometimes I think that things like this are better left unsolved. I incorporated as a non-profit Museum starting in 2009 to help with any possible copyright issues. Specifically the night of November 22nd, 1987 in Chicago. Amory: Without getting too deep into Max Headroom’s origins, this was a bizarre example of life imitating art — a hacker dropping into a real TV broadcast, posing as a character, who was a fictional hacker himself. No Ben, I do not. Ben: Chris set out to do an investigative piece. Buck James: “I don’t give a damn about politics is what I don’t give a damn about.” Dennis Weaver is Buck James, Sunday on ABC. Right in the middle of the PBS affiliate station WTTW’s broadcast of the episode, “Horror of Fang Rock.”, (a clip from "Horror of Fang Rock" plays). In this case people hijacked the airwaves of a major American television station. Ben: More on the FCC’s investigation and questions about whether they did take every step to find the perpetrators... in a minute. Bowie: Agreed. I don’t think it was a spur of the moment thing. There are some very lighthearted references in modern-day movies, like the digital cameo appearance in the 2015 movie Pixels. But at the time, Chuck didn't know him all that well either. Bowie: Agreed... I’m sure our being overly cautious comes across as suspicious to some, unfortunately. Chuck: I can't even tell you, in all candor, what the weather was like November 22nd, 1987. But someone who he would not name, specifically who he worked with — I think his boss — did not want him to go and pursue that, did not want him knocking on doors. 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