In the premiere episode, set in an anonymous, yet uncomfortably familiar world "20 minutes into the future," television has become the only growth industry and ratings are the networks only concern. Network 23 is revealed as an omnipotent conglomerate that monitors the world through hundreds of satellites. In this forbidding society, household television sets have no "off" switches and communication is total and instantaneous.
Corrupt, manipulative executives have enabled the Network to become the world's most powerful stations, due largely to the invention and secret use of "Blipverts," television commercials that are compressed and transmitted into the viewers' minds to prevent "channel switching." But a lethal side-effect of "Blipverts" on some viewers leads to a series of extraordinary "accidents" that the Network board members try to hide from the public.
When the Network's star investigative reporter, Edison Carter (Matt Frewer), discovers that his own organization is behind this diabolical plot, he sets out to expose the cover-up. During his investigation, Carter is involved in a near-fatal incident, and nervous Network executives take him for a computerized memory scan to see what he has learned. Bryce Lynch (Chris Young), the Network's brilliant, teenaged head of research and development, uses the opportunity to test his new invention, which records a subject's memory while computerizing its image on the screen.
This test results in the accidental "birth" of Carter's computerized alter-ego, Max Headroom (Frewer), a stuttering blend of human mind and powerful microchip, who inhabits the television airwaves. Carter and Max join forces under the watchful eyes of Network controller Theora Jones (Amanda Pays) and continue the investigation.
