Max Headroom: revived character is played by original actor Matt Frewer. Photograph: Channel 4
Posted on 10/02/2009 10:16:00 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
Max Headroom: revived character is played by original actor Matt Frewer. Photograph: Channel 4
Channel 4 is to bring back 1980s creation Max Headroom to front a series of TV ads to raise awareness of the digital switchover.
The campaign, which breaks this Saturday, features Matt Frewer, the actor who played the original Max Headroom.
Ads will feature Headroom criticising Channel 4, which created the stuttering digital host in the 1980s, for ignoring his vision of a digital future.
Photograph: Channel 4 The three week campaign, using the strapline "Get set for Digital", also promotes Channel 4's portfolio including E4, Film4, More4 and Channel 4+1.
"As part of our ongoing commitment to digital switchover, we wanted to produce a campaign that not only drives awareness of switchover but also stays true to Channel 4's values of doing things differently," said Rufus Radcliffe, head of Channel 4 marketing.
The six Max Headroom ads range in length from five seconds to more than a minute.
Channel 4 is also launching a website to provide information about digital switchover.
The campaign is the broadcaster's first digital awareness promotion and it was developed and written by Brett Foraker and Tom Tagholm at Channel 4.
The ads were directed by Headroom creator Rocky Morton and produced by MJZ and Channel 4.
Independent production company All3Media are the rights holders for Max Headroom
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Max in the 1980s: how Headroom looked in his heyday.
Channel 4 is to bring back 1980s creation Max Headroom to front a series of TV ads to raise awareness of the digital switchover. The campaign, which breaks this Saturday, features Matt Frewer, the actor who played the original Max Headroom. Ads will feature Headroom criticising Channel 4, which created the stuttering digital host in the 1980s, for ignoring his vision of a digital future....The six Max Headroom ads range in length from five seconds to more than a minute.
Okay, it's a two-year-old news story. So sue me.
From the "1%" blog article titled Channel 4 Finds Max Headroom in a Nursing Home:
If you were a geek, or a budding geek, back in the 80s, then you knew about Max Headroom. He not only hawked C-c-c-coke in commercials, but in 1987, for one short year, he had his own dystopian television show that felt like a cyberpunk rendition of Brazil.Here's the ads, courtesy of YouTube:Channel 4 in the UK has brought Maximum Headroom back, sort of. He’s a rambling geriatric, being wheeled around in an old television set by a large, British caregiver. Max continuously babbles in stuttered samples as he is bathed, taken on slow-moving tours, and wheeled to the beach to stare at the sea.
The premise: Max Headroom was ready for all things digital 20 years ago, and now Channel 4 is going the same route. The ad is a bit jarring and abrasive, but then again, wasn’t Max Headroom always that way?
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