Key Takeaways
- King Charles III is alive, and U.K. regulator Ofcom found that Radio Caroline wrongly announced his death after an employee played three prerecorded “death of the monarch” messages out of curiosity during The Barry Marsh Show.
- The station cut to the British national anthem, repeated the false announcement, then went silent for about 16 minutes and waited roughly 30 minutes to tell listeners it was a “technical issue,” leading Ofcom to rule it breached accuracy and correction rules.
- Radio Caroline blamed a computer error at the time, but later admitted the staffer was reprimanded and the sensitive files were moved offline, while Charles—who has continued public duties amid cancer treatment—was actually at a cultural event in Belfast when the fake news aired.
King Charles III is still alive, and now British regulators have figured out why a radio station told listeners otherwise: somebody apparently got curious.
Nearly three months after Radio Caroline mistakenly announced the death of King Charles III, the U.K.’s media regulator Ofcom has ruled that the station violated broadcasting standards over the May 19 incident. The August 10 findings, reported by People, also revealed that what Radio Caroline initially described as a “computer error” had a considerably more human explanation. According to Ofcom, an employee performing maintenance discovered three prerecorded announcements prepared for the king’s eventual death and played them “out of curiosity”—accidentally sending them straight over the air.
And this was not a blink-and-you-missed-it mistake. The prerecorded messages interrupted The Barry Marsh Show, with one announcement claiming that “news media” had confirmed the 77-year-old monarch’s death.
Regular programming eventually returned, but listeners had to wait about 30 minutes for an explanation. “I’ve just been informed that we’ve played in error some information a little earlier,” the host said on air, adding, “It is incorrect, it’s a technical issue, and of course we apologize.”
Ofcom received two complaints and determined Radio Caroline breached two provisions of its Broadcasting Code, including the requirement that news be reported “with due accuracy.”
The regulator also cited rules requiring significant errors to be acknowledged and corrected quickly. Radio Caroline explained that the show was being streamed from a remote location while the employee was working on a computer at the station’s main studio.
The files were accompanied by “a set of strict instructions to presenters and managers” governing when they could be used. The employee nevertheless opened them and, according to Ofcom, played them “out of curiosity,” unknowingly overriding the remote broadcast.
Once the employee realized the announcements had gone live, they stopped the files and left the office. The remote host, meanwhile, was on a phone call and initially had no idea that his program had been replaced by news of the king’s nonexistent death.
Radio Caroline told Ofcom that staff were working to fix the problem throughout the roughly 30 minutes before the correction. The employee responsible was reprimanded and later apologized, while the death-announcement files have since been removed from the studio computer and placed on an external hard drive.
The findings put a new spin on Radio Caroline’s original explanation. Immediately after the May incident, station manager Peter Moore blamed a “computer error” for activating the station’s “Death of a Monarch procedure.”
At the exact time Radio Caroline was prematurely sending him to the great palace in the sky, Charles and Queen Camilla were very publicly alive in Belfast, attending a cultural celebration, meeting performers and visiting local organizations.
Charles has remained active despite announcing a cancer diagnosis in February 2024 and later saying his treatment would be reduced after he responded well.
Charles became king following Queen Elizabeth II’s death in September 2022 and was crowned alongside Camilla at Westminster Abbey in May 2023, during the first British coronation in nearly 70 years.
