{"id":460265,"date":"2026-05-21T15:44:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T15:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/460265\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T15:44:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T15:44:11","slug":"radio-caroline-apologises-for-accidentally-announcing-death-of-king-charles-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/460265\/","title":{"rendered":"Radio Caroline apologises for accidentally announcing death of King Charles \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A radio station in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/world\/uk\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/world\/uk\/\">UK<\/a> has apologised for \u201cany distress caused\u201d after accidentally announcing that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/king-charles\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/king-charles\/\">King Charles<\/a> had died.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The erroneous announcement was made on Tuesday afternoon due to a computer error at Radio Caroline\u2019s main studio in Essex.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Station manager Peter Moore wrote on Facebook: \u201cDue to a computer error at our main studio, the Death of a Monarch procedure, which all UK stations hold in readiness while hoping not to require, was accidentally activated on Tuesday afternoon (19 May), mistakenly announcing that HM the King had passed away.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cRadio Caroline then fell silent as would be required, which alerted us to restore programming and issue an on-air apology.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cCaroline has been pleased to broadcast Her Majesty the Queen\u2019s, and now the king\u2019s, Christmas message and we hope to do so for many years to come.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cWe apologise to HM the king and to our listeners for any distress caused.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The post did not say how long it was before the mistake was discovered but on Wednesday afternoon, playback for Tuesday\u2019s broadcast between 1.58pm and 5pm was unavailable on the station\u2019s website.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The incident came as the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/ireland\/2026\/05\/19\/communities-come-together-for-a-few-tunes-as-charles-and-camilla-get-a-taste-of-a-belfast-fleadh\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/ireland\/2026\/05\/19\/communities-come-together-for-a-few-tunes-as-charles-and-camilla-get-a-taste-of-a-belfast-fleadh\/\">king and queen were in Northern Ireland<\/a>, where they joined a folk group for a performance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Charles and Camilla also watched dancers and sipped Irish whiskey in Belfast\u2019s Titanic Quarter on the first day of their trip.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Founded by Irishman <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/culture\/tv-radio-web\/irishman-who-founded-radio-caroline-and-changed-radio-forever-dies-1.4233665\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/culture\/tv-radio-web\/irishman-who-founded-radio-caroline-and-changed-radio-forever-dies-1.4233665\">Ronan O\u2019Rahilly<\/a> in 1964, Radio Caroline is a former pirate radio station that operated from ships off the English coast in order to get around a loophole in the strict radio licencing laws at the time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">After legislation in 1967 forced many pirate broadcasters to close, it continued intermittently before ending offshore broadcasts in 1990.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Caroline and other similar pirate stations inspired the 2009 comedy film The Boat that Rocked starring Bill Nighy and Philip Seymour Hoffman about a group of eccentric DJs living and working together at sea. &#8211; Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A radio station in the UK has apologised for \u201cany distress caused\u201d after accidentally announcing that King Charles&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60,1577],"class_list":["post-460265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-uk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}