April Fool Idents and other stunts

James2001 · 30-03-2021, 12:12 PM

Nickelodeon in the US did this one year, claiming they'd found a previously unaired episode of Rocko's Modern Life in this vaults:

https://archive.org/details/rockomayo

I guess you need to be familar with the show to get the joke.

Robertclark125 · 30-03-2021, 12:38 PM

One year, 1991 I think, the Oracle teletext service put its logo upside down on the home page, until midday.

Another year bbc breakfast ran a report on April 1st about a plan to play baseball at Lords cricket ground. It included an interview with Brian Johnson, who supported the plan. People got caught out, because the plan was true! Baseball was played at Lords that year!

Joe · 30-03-2021, 01:43 PM

No idea what date this is from, but it could conceivably be 1 April! (Just an excuse to post really…)

Some 2001 continuity on Nickelodeon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUmMYvcJCbA

JetixFann450 · 30-03-2021, 01:48 PM

Joe post_id=983 time=1617108217 user_id=1035 Wrote:No idea what date this is from, but it could conceivably be 1 April! (Just an excuse to post really…)

Some 2001 continuity on Nickelodeon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUmMYvcJCbA

"Wrong web address!" Ah, I love that it was a live graphic where you can see them accidentally type out nicktvvcv.co.uk on screen.

James2001 · 30-03-2021, 02:08 PM

That sort of thing makes you miss live continuity on kids TV channels. They always put a decent amount of effort in and made the channels seem friendly.

CCFG · 30-03-2021, 02:17 PM

James2001 post_id=989 time=1617109692 user_id=956 Wrote:That sort of thing makes you miss live continuity on kids TV channels. They always put a decent amount of effort in and made the channels seem friendly.

I think CBBC and CBeebies still use them. But wouldn't really know if they still do or the amount of effort in those links if they still do use them.

**dbl** · 30-03-2021, 11:30 PM

CCFG post_id=991 time=1617110277 user_id=1195 Wrote:
James2001 post_id=989 time=1617109692 user_id=956 Wrote:That sort of thing makes you miss live continuity on kids TV channels. They always put a decent amount of effort in and made the channels seem friendly.

I think CBBC and CBeebies still use them. But wouldn't really know if they still do or the amount of effort in those links if they still do use them.

Indeed, they still do. I think they're the last two channels standing in terms of live continuity

[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJf-G0BaHwg[/media]

**Rob** · 01-04-2021, 05:28 AM

James2001 post_id=765 time=1617051558 user_id=956 Wrote:I think they did a "ginger day" one year too, certainly one music channel did, might have been VH1 Classic rather than VH1 proper. And Magic played Christmas music one year too.

Back on April Fools Day 2018, MTV Rocks did a countdown of the Top 40 most influential bands and artists of all time, which featured...

On the same day, VH1 showed non-stop Christmas songs...

(forgive the state of my walls, I was redecorating at the time Smile

)

**Steve Williams** · 01-04-2021, 10:17 AM

My favourite April Fool, and one I'd love to see again, is the one CBBC did in 1991, when it was on Easter Monday. They showed the Transmitter Information caption in mirror image, and announced that some transmitters were broadcasting the wrong way round, with Simon Parkin holding up a bit of paper with "OLLEH" on it. They then introduced Ovide, the boring cartoon, and played the opening titles of that in mirror image. I thought that was really clever.

All those ones from American TV that are faithfully recorded on Wikipedia sound absolutely deathly. "On WXZY the sports guy did the weather and the weather guy did the sport and they said goodbye at the start and hello at the end! And the host of Wheel of Fortune did Jeopardy and the host of Jeopardy did Wheel of Fortune and all the Ps were Zs and all the Zs were Ps!!!!!!"

Brekkie · 01-04-2021, 10:21 AM

Radio rather than TV but I think Chris Tarrant doing his breakfast show at the weekend as if it were a weekday is one of the simpler and better ones of recent years.

James2001 · 01-04-2021, 10:34 AM

Steve Williams post_id=1707 time=1617268675 user_id=1326 Wrote:My favourite April Fool, and one I'd love to see again, is the one CBBC did in 1991, when it was on Easter Monday. They showed the Transmitter Information caption in mirror image, and announced that some transmitters were broadcasting the wrong way round, with Simon Parkin holding up a bit of paper with "OLLEH" on it. They then introduced Ovide, the boring cartoon, and played the opening titles of that in mirror image. I thought that was really clever.

I always remember Ovide being a Channel 4 show, can't remember it being on CBBC!

Roger Darthwell · 01-04-2021, 10:48 AM

Rob post_id=1626 time=1617251287 user_id=2 Wrote:
James2001 post_id=765 time=1617051558 user_id=956 Wrote:I think they did a "ginger day" one year too, certainly one music channel did, might have been VH1 Classic rather than VH1 proper. And Magic played Christmas music one year too.

Back on April Fools Day 2018, MTV Rocks did a countdown of the Top 40 most influential bands and artists of all time, which featured...

On the same day, VH1 showed non-stop Christmas songs...

(forgive the state of my walls, I was redecorating at the time )

This was a great April Fools' Day prank, pity that those 2 channels no longer exists :-I we could have had awesome pranks!

VMPhil · 01-04-2021, 10:58 AM

Joe post_id=983 time=1617108217 user_id=1035 Wrote:No idea what date this is from, but it could conceivably be 1 April! (Just an excuse to post really…)

Some 2001 continuity on Nickelodeon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUmMYvcJCbA

Wow, I remember that set very well. Industrial style with the metal and the fans in the ceiling.

Joe · 01-04-2021, 11:00 AM

I actually came across it because I was looking for other examples of this era of Nick continuity. Might just be my choice of keywords but I didn't find much!

**Inspector Sands** · 01-04-2021, 11:02 AM

There was a great 1st April episode of Going Live, so 1989 or 1990, which had an April Fool that I remember vividly.

Philip demonstrated a device called Chippy. It was a box about the size of a cigarette packet and you inserted little chip cards into it, each card could hold lots of music. I think it was voice controlled too. They demonstrated it and then later on had a phone in where viewers picked a song from the top 40 and Chippy could play it instantly.

So basically Philip Schofield demonstrated an MP3 player 7 or 8 years before they were invented. Of course it was just a trick and the music was being played by the sound gallery, but it was very convincing.

There was another April Fool gag on tnat episode - the guest for the big interview feature at the end of the programme (Hot Seat?) was trailed throughout the show as being one of the actors from Bread (not Peter Howitt, the other one) but they captioned that it wasn't actually him but Philip who was the guest, it being his birthday. They surprised him at the end and bloke from Bread took his role instead.

I'm surprised the Chippy thing hasn't surfaced publicly especially as I'm pretty sure it's on the same episode as both the Five Star incident, and an appearance by a teenage Michael Mcintyre

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