By tradition, in some countries, April 1 or April Fools' Day is marked by practical jokes. Notable practical jokes have appeared on radio and TV stations, newspapers, web sites, and have even been done in large crowds or gatherings.
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New England Suffers Maple Woes, 7:49, April 1, 2005, NPR [25] |
The BBC and other outlets like The World have published lists of serious stories they feel might be confused with April Fools' Day jokes. [88] [89] [90] One example of this is when Google announced Gmail in 2004, as it had a large amount of storage for the time. [91]
Have I Got News for You (HIGNFY) is a British television panel show, produced by Hat Trick Productions for the BBC, which premiered on 28 September 1990.
A shock jock is a radio broadcaster or DJ who entertains listeners and attracts attention using humor or melodramatic exaggeration that may offend some portion of the listening audience. The term is used pejoratively to describe provocative or irreverent broadcasters whose mannerisms, statements and actions are typically offensive to much of society. It is a popular term within the radio industry. A shock jock is the radio equivalent of the tabloid newspaper in that both consider entertaining their audience to be as important as—if not more important than—providing factual information. A radio station that relies primarily on shock jocks for programming has what is called a hot talk format.
Jimmy Kimmel Live!, sometimes shortened to JKL, is an American late-night political satire talk show, created and hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, and broadcast on ABC. The nightly hour-long show tapes and is based out of the Hollywood Masonic Temple in Hollywood, California. It debuted on January 26, 2003 as part of ABC's lead-out programming for Super Bowl XXXVII. For its first ten years, Jimmy Kimmel Live! aired at either the midnight or 12:05 a.m. ET/PT before moving to 11:35 p.m. on January 8, 2013. Despite its name, the show has not regularly aired live since 2004, when censors were unable to properly bleep censor a barrage of swearing from actor Thomas Jane.
The spaghetti-tree hoax was a three-minute hoax report broadcast on April Fools' Day 1957 by the BBC current-affairs programme Panorama, purportedly showing a family in southern Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from a "spaghetti tree". At the time of the report's broadcast, spaghetti was relatively unknown in the United Kingdom, and a number of viewers contacted the BBC afterwards for advice on growing their own spaghetti trees. Decades later, CNN called this broadcast "the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled".
The dihydrogen monoxide parody is a parody that involves referring to water by its unfamiliar chemical systematic name "dihydrogen monoxide" (DHMO, or the chemical formula H2O) and describing some properties of water in a particularly concerning manner — such as the ability to accelerate corrosion (rust) and cause suffocation (drowning) — for the purpose of encouraging alarmism among the audience to often incite a moral panic calling for water to be banned, regulated strictly or labeled as a hazardous chemical. The parody has also involved other uncommon chemical nomenclatures for water such as "hydrogen hydroxide", "dihydrogen oxide" and "hydric acid", used in many prank shows to scare people into thinking it as a lethal or corrosive substance.
Sidd Finch is a fictional baseball player, the subject of the notorious April Fools' Day hoax article "The Curious Case of Sidd Finch" written by George Plimpton and first published in the April 1, 1985, issue of Sports Illustrated. According to Plimpton, Finch was raised in an English orphanage, learned yoga in Tibet, and could throw a fastball as fast as 168 miles per hour (270 km/h).
Sheng Long is a character hoax related to the Street Fighter series, created by Electronic Gaming Monthly as an April Fools' prank in 1992. Conceived by editor Ken Williams due to a mistranslation suggesting the existence of a character named Sheng Long in the Capcom fighting game Street Fighter II, the publication released an article describing a method to fight the character in the game. Despite intending it to be an obvious joke, many players took it seriously, and other publications reprinted the details as fact without verifying its legitimacy causing the Sheng Long hoax to spread worldwide. As a result, the magazine later acknowledged it was indeed a hoax, though revisited the concept for a similar joke in 1997. Claiming Sheng Long would appear in Street Fighter III, they provided a backstory for the character and an appearance designed by editor Mike Vallas. Despite the article trailing off and being incomplete, it resulted in confusion between the North American and Japanese branches of Capcom, with the former calling the latter to ask why they had not been informed about the character.
A gag name is a pseudonym intended to be humorous through its similarity to both a real name and a term or phrase that is funny, strange, or vulgar. The source of humor stems from the double meaning behind the phrase, although use of the name without prior knowledge of the joke could also be funny. Examples of the use of gag names occur in works of fiction in which there is a roll call, a listing of names, or a prank call.
The Taco Liberty Bell was an April Fool's Day joke played by fast food restaurant chain Taco Bell on April 1, 1996. Taco Bell took out a full-page advertisement in seven leading U.S. newspapers announcing that the company had purchased the Liberty Bell to "reduce the country's debt" and renamed it the "Taco Liberty Bell". The ad was created by Jon Parkinson and Harvey Hoffenberg who worked at Bozell, the Taco Bell advertising agency at the time, and went on to win several industry awards. Thousands of people had called Taco Bell headquarters and the National Park Service before it was revealed at noon the same day that the story was a joke. White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry responded that the federal government was also "selling the Lincoln Memorial to Ford Motor Co. and renaming it the Lincoln-Mercury Memorial".
A practical joke or prank is a trick played on people, generally causing the victim to experience embarrassment, perplexity, confusion, or discomfort. The perpetrator of a practical joke is called a "practical joker" or "prankster". Other terms for practical jokes include gag, rib, jape, or shenanigan. Some countries in western nations make it tradition to carry out pranks on April Fools' Day and Mischief Night.
At the annual Harvard–Yale football game on November 20, 2004, Yale students, costumed as a Harvard "pep squad", distributed placards to Harvard fans for a card stunt. When the fans raised the placards together, they read "We Suck".
WWGR, commonly called Gator Country 101.9, is a country music radio station based in the Fort Myers, Florida area. The station, which is owned by Renda Media, operates with an ERP of 100 kW. This power gives it one of the best radio signals in all of Southwest Florida. Its transmitter is located off Corkscrew Road in Estero. This incredible signal also has its disadvantages, having exceptional interference with 101.9 "FM 101.9" WQMP, an alternative rock station licensed to Daytona Beach, but serves Orlando. The Sebring, Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Avon Park areas are the most affected by this interference with powerful radios receiving those two stations almost as one.
April Fools' Day or All Fools' Day is an annual custom on 1 April consisting of practical jokes and hoaxes. Jokesters often expose their actions by shouting "April Fools!" at the recipient. Mass media can be involved with these pranks, which may be revealed as such the following day. The custom of setting aside a day for playing harmless pranks upon one's neighbour has been relatively common in the world historically.
Rickrolling or a Rickroll is an Internet meme involving the unexpected appearance of the music video to the 1987 hit song "Never Gonna Give You Up", performed by English singer Rick Astley. The aforementioned video has over 1.5 billion views on YouTube. The meme is a type of bait and switch, usually using a disguised hyperlink that leads to the music video. When one clicks on a seemingly unrelated link, the site with the music video loads instead of what was expected, and they have been "Rickrolled". The meme has also extended to using the song's lyrics, or singing it, in unexpected contexts. Astley himself has also been Rickrolled on several occasions.
A media prank is a type of media event, perpetrated by staged speeches, activities, or press releases, designed to trick legitimate journalists into publishing erroneous or misleading articles. The term may also refer to such stories if planted by fake journalists, as well as the false story thereby published. A media prank is a form of culture jamming generally done as performance art or a practical joke for purposes of a humorous critique of mass media.
A prank call is a telephone call intended by the caller as a practical joke played on the person answering. It is often a type of nuisance call. It can be illegal under certain circumstances.
National Public Radio is an American public broadcasting organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It serves as a national syndicator to a network of more than 1,000 public radio stations in the United States. It differs from other non-profit membership media organizations, such as the Associated Press, in that it was established by an act of Congress.
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon is an American late-night talk show hosted by actor and comedian Jimmy Fallon that airs on NBC. The show premiered on February 17, 2014, and is produced by Broadway Video and Universal Television. It is the seventh incarnation of NBC's long-running Tonight Show franchise, with Fallon serving as the sixth host. The show also stars sidekick and announcer Steve Higgins and house band The Roots. The Tonight Show is produced by Katie Hockmeyer and executive-produced by Lorne Michaels. The show records from Studio 6B in Rockefeller Center, New York City, which is the same studio in which Tonight Starring Jack Paar and then The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson were produced from 1957 until 1972.
Mark Rober is an American YouTuber, engineer, inventor, and educator. He is known for his YouTube videos on popular science and do-it-yourself gadgets. Before he became a YouTuber, Rober was an engineer with NASA for nine years, where he spent seven years working on the Curiosity rover at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He later worked for four years at Apple Inc. as a product designer in their Special Projects Group, where he authored patents involving virtual reality in self-driving cars.
The Damon–Kimmel feud is a satirical public feud between actor Matt Damon and television host Jimmy Kimmel. The feud has garnered nationwide coverage since 2005, when Kimmel ended a season 3 episode of his show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, by jokingly saying "Apologies to Matt Damon, but we ran out of time" when Damon was not scheduled to be on the show at all. In the years since, Damon and Kimmel have treated the feud as a running gag, often enlisting the help of other celebrities to prank each other publicly, many of which take place on Kimmel's show.
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