9 Times TV Newsrooms Pulled Pranks on April Fools’ Day (VIDEO)
TV viewers must be on their guard every April 1, considering the shenanigans we see on the small screen each year. Remember when Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon switched late-night shows? Or when Alex Trebek and Pat Sajak swapped game shows? Or when a Bachelor couple got in trouble with their fake pregnancy?
(For our money, though, the best TV-related April Fools’ Day pranks are the fake listings at Metacritic, which this year include the premiere of Survivor: Trash Island, the Hallmark movie Christmas in July in April, and the Kim Kardashian-hosted reality competition How Many Books Can You Eat?)
And even ordinarily-straitlaced news programs get in on the mischief on April 1. Just check out the April Fools’ Day pranks below.
Spaghetti grows on trees in Switzerland
In 1957, BBC’s Panorama ran a news segment about that year’s “exceptionally heavy spaghetti crop” in Switzerland — with footage of strands of noodles hanging from trees — crediting the bounty to “the virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil.” And some viewers (born without a funny bone, apparently) complained about the spoof segment, according to the BBC Archive.
Color TV with the power of nylon
Sweden’s Sveriges Television fooled viewers into pulling nylon stockings over their black-and-white TVs in 1962 with the news that stretched nylon would convert the grayscale image to color. According to TIME, thousands fell for the April Fools’ Day prank.
Sitting down to watch smell-o-vision
The BBC struck again in 1965, airing a mock interview with a professor who claimed to have invented “smell-o-vision” technology to let viewers smell whatever was in front of the camera. That professor demonstrated the tech by slicing onions and brewing coffee in the studio. And in a mind-boggling twist, some viewers reported that they actually smelled those scents at home, per Wired.
The Great Blue Hill eruption that never was
A WNAC-TV news producer was fired for “his failure to exercise good news judgment” — and for violating an FCC rule about showing stock footage without identifying it as such — after his 1980 April Fools’ Day report about a volcanic eruption in Great Blue Hill in Milton, Massachusetts, sent people running from their homes.
A grand brawl on Grandstand
In 1989, just as presenter Des Lynam was extolling the professionalism of the BBC program Grandstand, viewers saw a handful of crew members enter a physical altercation in the background. Of course, it was an April Fools’ Day prank, but because it was a sports program, Lynam showed a slo-mo replay of the fight and provided blow-by-blow commentary.
Local news anchor takes a Virtual Sip
“I am not licking an iPad,” said FOX 5 San Diego’s Shally Zomorodi on April Fools’ Day 2011… just before she licked an iPad to test Virtual Sip, an app purported to transmit smells and tastes to iPhone and iPad screens. (The app was actually a promotion for Shock Top beer.) After learning she’d been had, Zomorodi stormed off set… then returned to vow revenge on fellow anchor Raoul Martinez.
Nancy Grace boots Robin Meade
HLN viewers got a shock in 2014 when Robin Meade abruptly announced her departure from Morning Express, and Nancy Grace immediately took over. “Yeah, ding-dong, the witch is gone,” Grace said. “I’m in. Robin Meade, buh-bye.”
Fields full of marshmallows
In 2019, Seattle’s KING 5 covered the marshmallow crops at Spooner Farms in Puyallup, Washington, with a B-reel of workers planting marshmallows in tilled rows. Spooner Farms is real; the bushes blooming with marshmallows, of course, were not.
A TV makeover crashes and burns
Across the pond that same year, This Morning co-host Holly Willoughby thought a woman was legitimately crying about her onscreen makeover gone wrong… and then thought the same woman legitimately got into a fiery car accident leaving the studio. But it was all an ITV stunt, and Willoughby cried tears of relief when she found out.
