&imwidth=800&imheight=600&format=webp&quality=medium "‘Out of curiosity’: Staff member played King Charles’ death message on air, then panics and runs away")
What was played out of curiosity has turned into a nightmare for a UK radio station. In May, Radio Caroline accidentally announced that King Charles III had died. Now, the radio station has been found to have breached Ofcom rules. So in May, radio listeners were shocked when, during the Barry Marsh show, it was announced that His Majesty had died.
King Charles’ death report mistakenly airs on radio station
For the wrong news aired, Radio Caroline has been found to have breached Ofcom rules. Over the major mishap, the media regulator received two complaints about the broadcast and the rules that it breached.
Criticising the radio for a "very significant inaccuracy" and for taking too long to issue a correction, Ofcom noted in its statement that the station waited around 30 minutes to broadcast an apology, despite engineers being aware of the issue at the time.
“As outlined above, Radio Caroline did not broadcast an apology and clarification until approximately 30 minutes after the inaccurate announcements were first broadcast,'' they said.
“We noted that the Licensee was monitoring the output around the time of the incident and that an engineer was already aware of the issue, but that it took some time to understand what had occurred and reinstate the scheduled programme, with that being exacerbated by the circumstances of the presenter streaming the programme remotely,” they added.
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On May 19, the station aired three pre-recorded announcements falsely announcing the death of the King.
In the message played, the radio station said that news media had confirmed that King Charles had died. One announcement said, “we have suspended our normal programmes until further notice as a mark of respect following the passing of His Majesty King Charles III”. Not just this, but the national anthem was also played with a 16 minutes of silence before the presenter apologized for the blunder.
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.”
In their explanation, Radio Caroline said that the mistake was made by a staff member who played the message out of curiosity. The person was performing maintenance on a studio computer when he found the three files prepared for King Charles’ death, which he played with no idea that they would be broadcast live.
In a statement, Ofcom’s bulletin, “explained that these files are accompanied with ‘a set of strict instructions to presenters and managers’ to follow before being aired, but, out of curiosity, the member of staff played the files, which stopped the stream from the presenter’s remote location, and broadcast the files on air.” The presenter of the show was working from the remote location when this happened.
