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.

Television

Spaghetti trees: The BBC television programme Panorama ran a hoax in 1957, purporting to show the Swiss harvesting spaghetti from trees. They claimed that the despised pest, the spaghetti weevil, had been eradicated. A large number of people contacted the BBC wanting to know how to cultivate their own spaghetti trees. It was, in fact, partially filmed in St Albans.Still a good joke – 47 years on (BBC News, April 1, 2004) The editor of Panorama at the time, Michael Peacock, approved the idea, which was pitched by freelance camera operator Charles de Jaeger. Peacock told the BBC in 2014 that he gave de Jaeger a budget of £100. Peacock said the respected Panorama anchorman Richard Dimbleby knew they were using his authoritativeness to make the joke work. He said Dimbleby loved the idea and went at it with relish.BBC TV News interview with Michael Peacock 1/4/14... Decades later CNN called this broadcast "the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled". In 1962, Swedish national television broadcast a 5-minute special on how one could get color TV by placing a nylon stocking in front of the TV. A rather in-depth description on the physics behind the phenomenon was included. Thousands of people tried it. Smell-O-Vision: In 1965, the BBC purported to conduct a trial of a new technology allowing the transmission of odour over the airwaves to all viewers. Many viewers reportedly contacted the BBC to report the trial's success. In 2007, the BBC website repeated an online version of the hoax, as did Google in 2013, in tribute. In 1969, the public broadcaster NTS in the Netherlands announced that inspectors with remote scanners would drive the streets to detect people who had not paid their radio/TV tax ("kijk en luistergeld" or "omroepbijdrage"). The only way to prevent detection was to wrap the TV/radio in aluminium foil. The next day all supermarkets were sold out of their aluminium foil, and a surge of TV/radio taxes were being paid. Great Blue Hill eruption prank: On April 1, 1980, Boston television station WNAC-TV aired a fictional news bulletin at the end of the 6 o'clock news which reported that Great Blue Hill in Milton, Massachusetts was erupting. The prank resulted in panic in Milton, where some residents began to flee their homes. The executive producer of the 6 o'clock news, Homer Cilley, was fired by the station for "his failure to exercise good news judgment" and for violating the Federal Communications Commission's rules about showing stock footage without identifying it as such. In 1989, on the BBC television sports show Grandstand, a fight broke out between members of staff directly behind Des Lynam who was commenting on the professionalism of his team. At the end of the show it was revealed to be an April Fools' joke. In 1997, Wheel of Fortune host Pat Sajak and then Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek switched places. In 1997, Cartoon Network broadcast an edited version (minus one blackface gag) of Tex Avery's 1944 Screwy Squirrel cartoon Happy-Go-Nutty repeatedly from 6 am to 6 pm, as part of an April Fool's joke that the cartoon character had seized control of the network. In a similar manner, Cartoon Network's evening programming block Adult Swim has had a tradition of pulling pranks on April Fools' Day every year since 2004 by altering programs or changing its programming schedule to air different and obscure programs, some of which include surprise premiere broadcasts of their original programming. In 2008, the BBC reported on a newly discovered colony of flying penguins. An elaborate video segment was even produced, featuring Terry Jones walking with the penguins in Antarctica, and following their flight to the Amazon rainforest. From 2013 to 2018, Netflix has performed April Fools' Day jokes on its subscribers, which include over-detailing categories of films, and adding original programming made up entirely of food cooking. In 2022, American late-night talk show hosts Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon swapped appearances, with Fallon hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live! and Kimmel hosting The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on ABC and NBC respectively. The production teams were simultaneously broadcasting in Los Angeles and New York City, as the two shows are in direct competition, both airing weekdays at 11:35 p.m. EDT/10:35 p.m. CDT. The shows featured a mutual satellite interview between Kimmel and Fallon, and Fallon's episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! furthered the April Fools' Day theme with Justin Timberlake appearing in exaggerated caricature as Matt Damon. A pre-taped segment between Fallon and Kimmel showed the two calling retired television host David Letterman, a homage to Letterman's running joke referring to the two hosts collectively as "The Jimmys".

Radio

In 1963, the BBC Radio programme Desert Island Discs featured a spoof theatrical manager, Sir Harry Whitlohn. Jovian–Plutonian gravitational effect: In 1976, British astronomer Sir Patrick Moore told listeners of BBC Radio 2 that unique alignment of two planets would result in an upward gravitational pull making people lighter at precisely 9:47 am that day. He invited his audience to jump in the air and experience "a strange floating sensation". Dozens of listeners phoned in to say the experiment had worked,Fooling around , book extract in The Guardian dated March 30, 2007, online at books.guardian.com (Retrieved March 29, 2009) among them a woman who reported that she and her 11 friends were "wafted from their chairs and orbited gently around the room.""Planetary Alignment Decreases Gravity – April Fool's Day, 1976" . Museum of Hoaxes. Retrieved December 21, 2013. In 1988, Capital Radio in London gave all their breakfast-show time-checks one hour early, panicking listeners who needed to get up for work. The following year, when April 1 fell on a Saturday, they broadcast the usual weekday programme, together with rush-hour travel news, again worrying people into thinking they should be getting up. National Public Radio reported that Richard Nixon would run for president in 1992. In 1992, two disc jockeys on radio station WNOR in Norfolk, Virginia, U.S., falsely reported that there had been leaking methane, a potential explosion hazard, detected at Mount Trashmore Park, a park built atop a covered landfill, in nearby Virginia Beach, scaring listeners. In 1993, radio station KGB-FM in San Diego, California told listeners that the Space Shuttle had been diverted to Montgomery Field, a small, local airport. Over 1,000 people drove to the airport to see it arrive in the middle of morning rush hour. There was no shuttle flying that day. Death of a mayor: In 1998, local WAAF "shock jocks" Opie and Anthony were discussing April Fools' Day hoaxes, and sardonically stated that Boston mayor Thomas Menino had been killed in a car accident. Menino happened to be on a flight at the time, lending credence to the prank as he could not be reached. The pair repeated that the mayor was dead several times throughout the broadcast, however listeners who tuned in late to the broadcast did not hear that they were repeating a bit, and when they pretended to tell the "news" to an unsuspecting listener (the listener thought she was calling a different show), the rumor spread quickly across the city, eventually causing news stations to issue alerts denying the hoax. The pair were fired shortly thereafter. In 1998, UK presenter Nic Tuff of West Midlands radio station pretended to be the British Prime Minister Tony Blair when he called the then South African President Nelson Mandela for a chat. It was only at the end of the call when Nic asked Mandela what he was doing for April Fools' Day that the line went dead. In 2000, the Triple J breakfast show hosted by Adam Spencer announced that the International Olympic Committee had stripped Sydney of its right to host the 2000 Summer Olympics, including a phone conversation with then-New South Wales Premier Bob Carr. Archers theme tune change: BBC Radio 4 (2005): The Today Programme announced in the news that the long-running serial The Archers had changed its theme tune to an upbeat disco style. National Public Radio in the United States: the producers of Morning Edition or All Things Considered annually include a fictional news story. These usually start off more or less reasonably, and get more and more unusual. An example of this is the 2006 story on the "iBod," a portable body control device. In 2008 it reported that the IRS, to assure rebate checks were actually spent, was shipping consumer products instead of checks. It also runs false sponsor mentions, such as "Support for NPR comes from the Soylent Corporation, manufacturing protein-rich food products in a variety of colors. Soylent Green is People". Canadian three-dollar coin: In 2008, the CBC Radio program As It Happens interviewed a Royal Canadian Mint spokesman who broke "news" of plans to replace the Canadian five-dollar bill with a three-dollar coin. The coin was dubbed a "threenie", in line with the nicknames of the country's one-dollar coin ("loonie" due to its depiction of a common loon on the reverse) and two-dollar coin ("toonie").As It Happens - 2008: Three-Dollar Coin Country to metal: Country and gospel radio station WIXE in Monroe, North Carolina does a prank every year. In 2009, midday host Bob Rogers announced he was changing his show to heavy metal. This resulted in numerous phone calls, about half from listeners wanting to request a song.Mark Washburn, "Fewer Tuning in for Most Local News", The Charlotte Observer, April 4, 2009. U2 live on rooftop in Cork: In 2009, hundreds of U2 fans were duped in an elaborate prank when they rushed to a shopping centre in Cork believing that the band were playing a surprise rooftop concert. The prank was organised by Cork radio station RedFM. The band was a tribute band called U2opia.

Newspapers and magazines

The German newspaper Berliner Tageblatt reported in 1905 that thieves had tunneled beneath the U.S. Federal Treasury and stolen all its silver and gold. On April 1, 1906, the Chicago Tribune and several other newspapers printed an elaborate two-page feature article detailing the recent invasion of Chicago by "hordes of prehistoric monsters", illustrated with a series of 8 doctored photographs purporting to show tyrannosaurs, diplodoci and other dinosaurs wreaking havoc throughout the metropolis. On April 1, 1965, the covers of the rival Belgian comic magazines Tintin and Spirou were redesigned to make the Tintin cover look like Spirou and vice versa, complete with restyled logos and lay-out. The joke was thought up by Spirou editor Yvan Delporte in collaboration with Tintin's editors. Beginning on April 1, 1971, over 50 residents of Mobile, Alabama made calls to the Mobile Press newspaper reporting the existence of a wolf-like creature with the head of a woman, dubbed the Mobile Wolf Woman. The Mobile Press published a story on the reports on April 8, and sightings stopped soon thereafter. The exact nature of the creature is not known, but there has been speculation that it was an April Fools' Day prank. Scientific American columnist Martin Gardner wrote in an April 1975 article that MIT had invented a new chess computer program that predicted "pawn to queens rook four" is always the best opening move. In The Guardian newspaper, in the United Kingdom, on April Fools' Day, 1977, a fictional mid-ocean state of San Serriffe was created in a seven-page supplement.