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In our nightmare world of doom-scrolling and 24-hour news cycles, the idea of a slow news day feels like unrealistic bliss. For BBC radio news listeners on April 18, 1930, though, there was, in fact, no news. Seriously, the news announcer just said there was nothing to report on.
The lack of news happened during the 8:45 p.m. broadcast (or 20:45, since we’re dealing with the British). This was intended to be a 15-minute news broadcast before the start of an airing of Richard Wagner’s opera Parsifal at 9:00. When the presenter began, he simply stated, “There is no news,” and that was it. Piano music played for the remainder of the news program.
To our modern minds, this can seem impossible. On even the slowest of days, there is some sort of news. And there certainly was news happening that BBC could have reported on. Instead of news, though, there was just the piano.
Even by the standards of the time, the broadcast on April 18, 1930, was an anomaly, so why was there “no news?” This can largely be traced back to the philosophy of the BBC’s first Director-General, John Reith. His focus was on the quality of news rather than simply having news for the sake of it. Plus, BBC was not supported by advertisers, so Reith had no one to please but his audience.
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source https://earn8online.com/index.php/393879/the-day-that-had-no-news-april-18-1930/
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