Death of The Queen Mother
IRN was strongly criticised by many of its client stations for its handing of the death of the Queen Mother on 29 March 2002. Many commercial radio stations have OBIT lights installed in their studios which are automatically triggered by IRN in the event of the death of a leading member of the British Royal family. This is designed to give stations warning of such an event and allow them to adjust their output accordingly, as well as join special programming produced by IRN.
On this occasion, the OBIT alarm button failed to be pressed by IRN staff in London and radio stations were caught off-guard when the news was announced in the regular 1800 news bulletin.
IRN editor Jon Godel subsequently issued an apology in a memo addressed to "all news editors and programme controllers" in which he admitted this was "not IRN's finest hour".
Read more about this topic: Independent Radio News
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