On the morning of April 27, 1986, at 12:32am, John R. MacDougall, a satellite TV dealer in Ocala, Florida, was working at Central Florida Teleport, a company that uplinks services to satellites. He was overseeing the uplink of the movie Pee-wee's Big Adventure as part of the evening's programming for the now-defunct pay-per-view network People's Choice.
At the end of his shift, he swung the dish back into it's storage position, which aimed it at the location of Galaxy 1, the satellite that carried HBO. As a protest against the introduction of high fees and scrambling equipment, he transmitted a signal onto the satellite which overrode HBO's airing of The Falcon and the Snowman for 4½ minutes.
The text message which appeared on the sets of HBO subscribers across the eastern half of the country read: GOODEVENING HBO FROM CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT $12.95/MONTH ? NO WAY ! MacDougall chose the name "Captain Midnight" from a movie he had recently seen, On the Air Live with Captain Midnight.
After media pressure forced the Federal Communications Commission to act, MacDougall was charged and plea bargained a $5,000 fine and was placed on one year's probation. To this day, MacDougall still owns and operates MacDougall Electronics, a satellite dish dealership, in Ocala, Florida.