Dan Abrams Highlights Some of the Best April Fool’s Pranks in TV History

Dan Abrams on Friday highlighted some of the best pranks ever pulled off by the media for April Fool’s Day.

In his Mediaite Moments segment, Abrams, who is the founder of Mediaite, noted moments throughout history when reporters and the companies they work for managed to trick audiences.

“The sad reality is, though, that those jokes in the media don’t really work like they used to, because the national discourse is already filled with allegations of fake news, hoaxes, and disinformation,” Abrams noted.

Still, there have been times when the media tricked people, such as in 2014 when HLN’s Robin Meade announced on the air that she was stepping down from Morning Express.

Abrams noted the prank was really hammered home when Nancy Grace was presented as Meade’s replacement. Viewers were outraged, but Meade never went anywhere.

The host presented another segment from 1989 in which KING-TV was able to trick some viewers in Seattle into believing the Space Needle had collapsed.

The network’s Michael Schauerman broke in on April 1 with a “special report” which Abrams obtained.

“Roughly 7 minutes ago at 6:53 pm, the space needle collapsed,” said Schauerman, who deemed the building a total loss. The network also got a “witness” to participate in the gag.

Abrams noted the joke’s success, as many believed one of the country’s most iconic buildings had come down.

KING-TV left viewers scratching their heads 30 years later, in 2019, with a bizarre story about a Washington state marshmallow farm. Abrams noted that the segment likely drew inspiration from “what may have been the first broadcast news prank, filed by the BBC in, 1957.”

The network reported on a spaghetti farm in Switzerland and showed its viewers images of people plucking pasta from trees.

Abrams joked the BBC “was way ahead of its time.”

The host of Dan Abrams Live did end the segment with some somber news.

“This will be our last Mediaite Moments segment on this show,” he said. “We have spent a lot of time mocking media hypocrisy and bias, but after studying this the way that we have, I have come to believe that we have been unfair.”

Abrams concluded cable news media is now “very objective” and no longer operates through neither “bias” nor “hypocrisy.”

“I feel like I would be doing a disservice by continuing this segment,” he said. “Happy April 1.”

Watch above, via NewsNation.