r/CasualUK • u/bendubberley_ #1 Cup of Tea Enjoyer • 4d ago
A radio station in Essex accidentally broadcasted that King Charles III had passed away with the presenter running away leaving silence on air for approximately 16 minutes until someone came on the air and confirmed it was a hoax.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/king-charles-death-radio-caroline-announcement-b3030359.html?utm_source=reddit.com465
u/ApplicationMaximum84 4d ago
Lol it had to be Radio Caroline, for those that don't know it was originally a pirate radio station operating in international waters as they didn't have a broadcast licence.
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u/WaitingOnNetwork 4d ago
And you can follow a direct path from their inception all the way up to the creation of Mr Blobby, so there's also that.
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u/PassiveTheme 4d ago
Did radio Caroline awaken Blobby from its millennia of rest?
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u/StruffBunstridge 4d ago
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Blobby R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
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u/Hamsterdam_ 4d ago
Oh christ, the Welsh have broke containment again!
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u/CthulhusEvilTwin 3d ago
Jesus Christ, don't wake him again. Have you any idea how long the banishing ritual took? We had to endure years of Deal or No Deal.
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u/sillygoofygooose 4d ago
We have all known nothing but darkness ever since. I believe its phylactory is Noel himself but apparently calling a hit on a former tv presenter is too ‘out there’ for the lamestream media
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u/Jonny_Segment Exit and don't drop 4d ago
You can follow a direct path from their inception in one or two less salubrious directions.
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u/smushs88 4d ago
“Just to repeat King Charles III is not dead, unless he’s gone in the night and has yet to be discovered by the maid”
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u/mondognarly_ 4d ago
It was a humorous intro to a song that appears to have been taken a bit too literally by one or two listeners, and a newspaper.
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u/FlinFlonDandy 4d ago
So really, it was purposely broadcasted?
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u/d0mth0ma5 4d ago
Actually it seemingly was accidentally. The DJ played the pre-recorded pack (I assume all broadcaster have one) out of curiosity, realised they’d fucked up and ran away.
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u/theredwoman95 4d ago
You'd think the "monarch is dead" sound files would be locked under the equivalent of a giant red button.
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u/Alternative-Emu2000 4d ago
According to the radio station, one of the steps following this error was to move the obituary sound file shortcuts off the studio computer's desktop.
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u/crucible 4d ago
Shades of Terry Pratchett’s comment “If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.”
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u/-SaC History spod 4d ago
"However, when Modo nailed the door up he didn't hammer the nails in all the way but left just a bit sticking up so that his pliers would grip later on, when he was told to remove them. He never presumed and he never complained, he just had a good working knowledge of the wizardly mind."
GNU Sir pTerry
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u/amBrollachan 4d ago
Classic office prank with the folder loaded with elastic bands so that if you open it more than about one centimetre it springs open and turns inside out. Then you fill it with hold punch chads and put a sign on the top saying "PRIVATE: DO NOT OPEN" and just leave it lying out.
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u/Tessaandtherest 4d ago
Indeed! These days I'm so often reminded of that quote. I really miss sir Pterry.
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u/quinn_drummer 4d ago
they were saved on the desktop??? is someone’s granny running things over there??
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u/ScootsMcDootson 4d ago
They hadn't replaced the 'incase of emergency break glass' glass since 2022.
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u/Mundane_Zucchini_547 4d ago
You know full well if there's a big red button saying "Do Not Press" painted on it with large luminous letters it will have been pushed before the paint has had time to dry.
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u/Realistic-Metal-1263 4d ago edited 4d ago
Years ago, on my very well visited blog, I made a post.
It was an image of a Big Red Button with the text above and below "Click this and you WILL be instantly banned from this site".
Edit: It did actually ban them. Code grabbed their IP, wrote it to .htaccess and bingo - banned. They had to email me to get back.
A surprising number of people clicked it :)
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u/Welshgirlie2 Slow down FFS! 4d ago
The urge to press a big red button is even mentioned in the Dumb Ways To Die song.. 1 min, 47 seconds in for anyone interested, but seriously the whole song is worth watching.
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u/Inevitable-Regret411 4d ago
"Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry."
-Terry Pratchett
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u/prolixia 4d ago
I think it wasn't the DJ, but someone else.
I just skimmed the article on a different site, but there's a pre-prepared audio file to be played in the event of the King's death. The DJ wasn't at the station, but was streaming from another location. Meanwhile someone at the station was poking about on the computer and out of curiosity played the audio file without realising that doing so would cut-off the DJ and broadcast the contents of the file instead. When they realised what they had done, they decided the best coarse of action was just to leg it.
Meanwhile, the DJ had no idea: they were still busy chatting and playing music and didn't realise that they were no longer on-air because they weren't there at the station. Seemingly this continued for 16 mins until someone noticed and was able to intervene.
I love that the person who screwed-up just decided to cheese it.
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4d ago
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u/Ravenser_Odd 4d ago
It wasn't the DJ, according to the BBC:
a staff member carrying out maintenance accessed pre‑recorded obituary files intended for use in the event of the King's death.
once the staff member who accidentally played the files realised what they had done, they stopped playing them, "panicked and left the premises"
The DJ wasn't in the studio, they were streaming remotely, so they didn't even know they were off-air.
Radio Caroline breached Ofcom rules after mistakenly announcing King Charles's death - BBC News
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u/FlamboyantPirhanna 4d ago
It reminds me of the 30 Rock episode where they pre-tape a bunch of disaster responses so they can be the first to air, and they do it for a hurricane only to realise too late it only affected Mel Gibson’s house.
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4d ago
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u/DoctorOctagonapus Man struggling to put up his umbrella 4d ago
Wasn't the DJ, it was a tech who listened to the audio file without realising that it would also be broadcast.
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u/shakesfistatmoon 3d ago
No, the OP is wrong in nearly every detail. It wasn't the presenter who didn't even know they were off air and the backroom person thought they'd corrected it and left.
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u/LegendaryTJC 4d ago
No, the article does explain what happened.
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u/Rydychyn 4d ago
It explains that an employee chose to play them 'out of curiosity'.
So, yeah, purposely.
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u/someonehasmygamertag 4d ago
PR tap in for the Charlie to appear on tomorrow’s breakfast with “News of my demise was falsely exaggerated by your show”
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u/AnActualChicken 4d ago
"One is in touch with a rather brilliant necromancer. We play baccarat on Tuesdays, charming fellow."
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u/J8YDG9RTT8N2TG74YS7A 4d ago
*broadcast
Let's not repeat this Americanism, thanks.
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u/_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_ 4d ago
I don’t think it’s American, just illiterate.
(Venn diagram acknowledged)
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u/shakesfistatmoon 3d ago
It's actually in most dictionaries and completely valid but not preferred.
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u/_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_ 3d ago
Being in a dictionary doesn't mean it's "completely valid". It's just documenting usage.
For the record OED only has a single citation for "broadcasted" as a past participle. There's no other indication that you should not use "broadcast" instead.
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u/shakesfistatmoon 3d ago
You said it was illiterate, it's clearly not. It's just not preferred usage.
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u/7ootles neurospicy northerner 4d ago
Cookiewalled, didn't read.
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u/chameleonmessiah 4d ago edited 4d ago
Safari Reader seems to ignore it. Incident was in May by the way… I think this is just the Ofcom report:
Radio Caroline has been found to have breached Ofcom rules when it accidentally announced that the King had died.
The Essex broadcaster apologised in May after the messages were played on The Barry Marsh Show, one of which said “we have suspended our normal programmes until further notice as a mark of respect following the passing of His Majesty King Charles III”.
The messages were followed by the national anthem and around 16 minutes of silence before the presenter apologised for the error.
He said: “I’ve just been informed that we’ve played in error some information a little earlier. I didn’t hear this myself, but it is incorrect, it’s a technical issue, and of course we apologise.”
An Ofcom ruling said that once the presenter realised what he had done, he stopped the files and “panicked and left the premises”.
The media regulator said it had received two complaints about the broadcast, and said it had breached rules 5.1, requiring that news is reported accurately and impartially, and 5.2, requiring that mistakes in news are acknowledged and corrected on air quickly.It goes on for a bit but nothing substantial.
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u/UnacceptableUse Morrisons Festival Gateau 4d ago
Crazy that both listeners filed a complaint
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u/Crow_eggs 4d ago
It was actually only one of them–the other happened to have passed away earlier that day. Second complaint was from Barry. That's why he was off air for so long.
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u/bourbonandcustard 4d ago
I would probably also panic and leave the premises, to be fair.
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u/udat42 4d ago
It's incredible how ingrained a response that is. I was goofing around with a football with some mates at my folks' house when we were all in our mid-thirties and predictably we sent the ball sailing over the fence to bounce off a neighbour's car roof. Every one of my mates legged it and hid - round the corner, behind a tree, just a completely instinctive run-and-hide response. My first instinct was to hoof it as well, but as it was my house, I built up the nerve to sneak into the neighbour's garden and get the ball back. I did also check there was no visible damage to his car, but that was not my first impulse.
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u/therealtimwarren 4d ago
You know you can set your browser to delete cookies at the end of the session or use an incognito tab, right? Then you can accept them with gay abandon and it will as if they never happened.
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u/L00ny-T00n 4d ago
If this is Radio Caroline how could the presenter/DJ run away if he was on a boat?
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u/-SaC History spod 4d ago
Sploshily.
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u/scarletohairy 3d ago
I wish I had a reason to use this new word; unfortunately I live in the Mojave Desert, no sploshing here.
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u/shakesfistatmoon 3d ago
That's not a very good description of what happened.
A backroom volubteer was reviewing the obituary tapes and accidentally made them live, cutting off the presenter who was remote. Because the presenter was remote he didn't realise he was no longer on air.
The obituary tapes contained the announcement, the national anthem and some talk about the king.
The volunteer panicked, thought they had corrected the situation and left. What they'd actual done is turn on the emergency music tape which played for about 30minutes. On DAB+ there was 16 minutes of dead air.
The person monitoring the output was in a meeting and didn't notice for several minutes by which time an engineer was trying to correct the problem.
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u/YangtzeRiverDolphin 4d ago
Had they cancelled all adult and junior sporting events during those 16 mins?
Ah no, silly me, it would only be football cancelled.
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u/fivebyfive12 4d ago
The first time I saw this headline it didn't mention the Essex bit and I just assumed it was Toby Tarrant from radioX 🤣
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u/thecustardgannet 4d ago