Curiosity very nearly killed the King.
There are bad days at work, and then there is accidentally announcing the death of King Charles III because you clicked something you absolutely were not supposed to.
UK broadcaster Radio Caroline has been found in breach of Ofcom rules after listeners were told three times that the King had died during a May 19 broadcast.
And this isn’t just any station. Radio Caroline began broadcasting from a ship off the English coast in 1964, becoming one of Britain’s great pirate radio names and helping drag pop and rock onto a radio landscape that badly needed it.
Which somehow makes what happened 62 years later even better.
During The Barry Marsh Show, a staff member doing computer maintenance discovered pre-recorded announcements prepared for the eventual death of King Charles III.
Despite warnings around the files, they played them “out of curiosity”.
The audio promptly overrode the remote broadcast. Pretty sure they were not expecting that to happen.
Listeners heard three announcements declaring the King dead, followed by God Save the King. Realising what had happened, the staffer stopped the audio, panicked and left the building.
I keep coming back to that last detail. Not fixing it. Not calling someone. Just leaving.
Radio Caroline then sat in silence for around 16 minutes before programming returned, with an apology following roughly half an hour after the original announcement.
Ofcom ruled the station had breached rules around accuracy and timely corrections, describing the mistake as a “very significant inaccuracy”.
The employee was reprimanded, and Radio Caroline has now moved its royal death files onto a secure external hard drive.
Which is probably where they should have been in the first place.
