电台"出于好奇"播了国王的讣告，然后是十六分钟死寂

Britain's most embarrassing broadcasting accident this year left sixteen minutes of empty air.

First, an industry convention: every major radio station has pre-recorded what it will broadcast when the King dies — an announcement, the national anthem, then all programming stops.

That recording sits on a computer, and may go twenty years without ever being used.

One day in May, at an old British radio station, someone was at work.

He saw that recording, was curious what it sounded like, and clicked play.

The problem is that the computer was connected to the live broadcast.

So listeners heard an announcement: out of respect, programming is suspended, because King Charles has died.

Then came the national anthem.

In Britain, those two things together mean only one thing.

The staff member realised at that moment what he had done.

His choice was to run straight out of the building.

He did not cut the broadcast, did not say anything, did not fetch anyone — there was nobody left in the station at all.

What followed was sixteen minutes of complete silence.

For listeners that was more frightening than the announcement: silence looks like confirmation.

The fact is that King Charles was perfectly fine.

The regulator later stepped in and found the station in breach; the staff member was reprimanded, the station apologised, and the recording was deleted from the studio computer.

The reason this is worth telling is that it exposed something rarely thought about: on almost every media outlet's computer sits a death announcement for something that has not happened yet.

Think about it: if your job had one button you were absolutely forbidden to press, would you be curious what happens when you do?