History Main / BreakingNewsInterruption

** The original series had episode 29, "The Lizard Woman Has Come!", pre-empted by news coverage of the Apollo 11 moon landing. It would air a week later as a result.

* [[http://home-aki.la.coocan.jp/kirby-houdou.htm According to this page]], the last few minutes of the original Japanese airing of the ''Anime/KirbyRightBackAtYa'' episode "Hunger Struck" were interrupted by a news report about a strong earthquake hitting Miyagi Prefecture a few seconds before the episode ended. Due to this incident and the complaints it caused, a rerun of the episode was scheduled a week later.

* On April 20, 1999, the premiere of the ''WesternAnimation/KingOfTheHill'' episode "Revenge of the Lutefisk" was pre-empted in Denver by local coverage of the Columbine massacre. As a result of this association, the episode was banned from rerunning in the area for a while after the incident.

** Of the major BBC channels, [=BBC1=] and BBC News were taking the story of the Queen's downturn in health live, and so the lowering of the Union Flag shown live on TV became the ''de facto'' announcement of the Queen's death. Immediately after that shot, [=BBC1=] and BBC News, as well as BBC Parliament and BBC Alba (which had been showing a episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheAdventuresOfTintin'') switched to BBC News' announcer delivering the initial announcement. They were joined a minute later by BBC Scotland (which inexplicably dumped out of the announcement soon after to go back to regular programming briefly). BBC2 was airing a sporting event, and did not pick up the news until the BBC as a whole interrupted programming for the official news. And even then, the Welsh-language BBC waited until the program being broadcasted at that time completed to break into Welsh-language coverage of the Queen's death, roughly 5 minutes after the rest of the BBC had already started coverage. Averted by BBC Three and Four, as when they started up for the evening, both channels were suspended, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8dRXmTVxWY replaced by a slide telling viewers to switch over to BBC One for an important news announcement.]]

** In her autobiography about surviving the Rwandan genocide, Esther Mujawayo wrote that she associated classical music with political upheaval because the national radio network used this music [[HereWeGoAgain each time a coup occurred]].

* In America, ''sports'' events are [[UsefulNotes/SportsPreemption never preempted]], and [[ThereShouldBeALaw it's actually the law]], entirely because of one event from UsefulNotes/TheSixties known as the "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidi_Game Heidi Game]]". It was an AFL game between the Oakland Raiders and the New York Jets that was running long; Creator/{{NBC}} decided to preempt the last few minutes so as to allow the next program to start on time, a MadeForTVMovie of ''Literature/{{Heidi}}''. They figured that there wasn't much time left and the Jets were up by three points, so [[TemptingFate nothing super dramatic would happen, right]]? Except the Raiders conjured up a MiracleRally, scored ''two'' touchdowns, and won the game. (And to add insult to injury, NBC flashed a pop-up showing the score during the movie.) NBC got a ''deluge'' of complaints about this[[note]]even before the game was finished, which is thought to have prevented them from switching back to the game, because the complaints [[NiceJobBreakingItHero tied up the phone lines and prevented them from contacting the technicians to tell them to make the switch]][[/note]], which is why nothing like this has ever happened since then -- not even on cable. If the other broadcast is sufficiently important, they'll delay it rather than preempt it[[note]]this causes weird things when a show is timed for a specific time of year, like the World Series delaying ''WesternAnimation/TreehouseOfHorror'' so that it aired in November (breaking a long streak of October airings in the process)[[/note]]. They won't even break for news; one of the commentators usually announces it during the game (''e.g.'' the famous announcement on ''Series/MondayNightFootball'' of the assassination of Music/JohnLennon).

* While that varies from country to country, definitely TruthInTelevision in some state-owned media as (news) radio stations, that will interrupt a program to broadcast the discourse of a head of state, including a foreign one in diplomatic visit, important politician as the opposition's leader, etc. even if it's not something very serious.

While that varies from country to country, definitely TruthInTelevision in some state-owned media as (news) radio stations, that will interrupt a program to broadcast the discourse of a head of state, important politician as the opposition's leader, etc. even if it's not something very serious.

* In the Mountain Time zone, a Creator/{{CTV}} airing of the ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' episode "Pajama Day" faded out early to join the live coverage of a sporting event. The cutoff happened like this: "A nice cozy condo after a long…"

* In the Mountain Time zone, a Creator/{{CTV}} airing of the ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' episode "Pajama Day" faded out early to join the live coverage of a sporting event. The cutoff happened like this: "A nice cozy condo after a long…"

** Website/YouTube has archived airchecks of the moment the news broke on various radio stations. A few examples: WLW in Cincinnati had just begun a program of Broadway show music during which ''Theatre/LilAbner'' was to be featured; KNX in Los Angeles aired its first bulletin during the West Coast feed of the Arthur Godfrey show (which was prerecorded); and WTIC in Hartford, Connecticut, aired its first bulletin during a call-in household-hints program (where Thanksgiving recipes were the main topic of conversation), which left one caller so stunned she couldn't continue and had to tearfully hang up. In Dallas itself, KLIF, a leading, top-rated pop music station, interrupted the song "I Have a Boyfriend" by The Chiffons to report only that shots had been fired at JFK's motorcade, with no word on any injuries. As did most stations, KLIF, after airing its initial reports, then returned to normal programming as the newsroom waited for further bulletins to come in. Some who were on the air at the time later recalled that they thought someone was playing a sick joke until they realized it was real and started either continuous news coverage (if the station was a network affiliate) or instrumental or religious music interspersed with news bulletins (if the station was an independent). As should be expected, the initial bulletins had some errors, like saying that the bullets tore through the limousine's detachable bubble top (after some morning rain cleared out, it was decided to not put the top on the car so Kennedy could ride in the open), and that UsefulNotes/LyndonJohnson had possibly been hit in the arm by one of the bullets and was going in for treatment at Parkland Hospital alongside Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally (Johnson was unharmed, but instead went inside the hospital for a closed-door meeting with Kennedy's staff and the Secret Service to plan out their next moves in the event Kennedy died).

* Another case of a radio show broadcasting a newsworthy event as it broke was with Dan Ingram, the popular afternoon DJ on WABC in New York on November 9, 1965. In the early moments of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_1965 Great Northeast Blackout]], WABC's turntables started running slow as electricity began getting disrupted, leading Ingram to turn on his mic to joke about the songs playing "in the key of R" and to report on lights blinking in the studio, before the transmitter power finally cuts out (ironically during a news update).
* In an unusual case of a show being interrupted by breaking news that turned out to be about another member of the station's air staff, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO1t6W6m_TI talk show host Ken Hamblin]] of KOA in Denver, Colorado discarded his original discussion topics on the night of June 18, 1984 when the station's news staff broke the story that morning host Alan Berg (whose timeslot Hamblin took over a few months earlier when Berg's show was rescheduled) had been murdered outside his apartment (a murder eventually revealed to have been plotted and executed by a neo-Nazi group).

** Website/YouTube has archived airchecks of the moment the news broke on various radio stations. A few examples: WLW in Cincinnati had just begun a program of Broadway show music during which ''Theatre/LilAbner'' was to be featured; KNX in Los Angeles aired its first bulletin during the West Coast feed of the Arthur Godfrey show (which was prerecorded); and WTIC in Hartford, Connecticut, aired its first bulletin during a call-in household-hints program (where Thanksgiving recipes were the main topic of conversation), which left one caller so stunned she couldn't continue and had to tearfully hang up. In Dallas itself, KLIF, a leading, top-rated pop music station, interrupted the song "I Have a Boyfriend" by The Chiffons to report only that shots had been fired at JFK's motorcade, with no word on any injuries. As did most stations, KLIF, after airing its initial reports, then returned to normal programming as the newsroom waited for further bulletins to come in. Some who were on the air at the time later recalled that they thought someone was playing a sick joke until they realized it was real and started either continuous news coverage (if the station was a network affiliate) or instrumental or religious music interspersed with news bulletins (if the station was an independent). As should be expected, the initial bulletins had some errors, like saying that the bullets tore through the limousine's bubble top (after some morning rain cleared out, it was decided to let Kennedy ride in the open air), and that UsefulNotes/LyndonJohnson had possibly been hit in the arm by one of the bullets and was going in for treatment at Parkland Hospital alongside Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally (Johnson was unharmed, but instead went inside the hospital for a closed-door meeting with Kennedy's staff and the Secret Service to plan out their next moves in the event Kennedy died).

** Website/YouTube has archived airchecks of the moment the news broke on various radio stations. A few examples: WLW in Cincinnati had just begun a program of Broadway show music during which ''Theatre/LilAbner'' was to be featured; KNX in Los Angeles aired its first bulletin during the West Coast feed of the Arthur Godfrey show (which was prerecorded); and WTIC in Hartford, Connecticut, aired its first bulletin during a call-in household-hints program (where Thanksgiving recipes were the main topic of conversation), which left one caller so stunned she couldn't continue and had to tearfully hang up. In Dallas itself, KLIF, a leading, top-rated pop music station, interrupted the song "I Have a Boyfriend" by The Chiffons to report only that shots had been fired at JFK's motorcade, with no word on any injuries. As did most stations, KLIF, after airing its initial reports, then returned to normal programming as the newsroom waited for further bulletins to come in. Some who were on the air at the time later recalled that they thought someone was playing a sick joke until they realized it was real and started either continuous news coverage (if the station was a network affiliate) or instrumental or religious music interspersed with news bulletins (if the station was an independent). Interestingly, a lot of the initial bulletins reported that UsefulNotes/LyndonJohnson had possibly been hit in the arm by one of the bullets and was going in for treatment at Parkland Hospital alongside Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally (Johnson was unharmed, but instead went inside the hospital for a closed-door meeting with Kennedy's staff and the Secret Service to plan out their next moves in the event Kennedy died).

** Website/YouTube has archived airchecks of the moment the news broke on various radio stations. A few examples: WLW in Cincinnati had just begun a program of Broadway show music during which ''Theatre/LilAbner'' was to be featured; KNX in Los Angeles aired its first bulletin during the West Coast feed of the Arthur Godfrey show (which was prerecorded); and WTIC in Hartford, Connecticut, aired its first bulletin during a call-in household-hints program (where Thanksgiving recipes were the main topic of conversation), which left one caller so stunned she couldn't continue and had to tearfully hang up. In Dallas itself, KLIF, a leading, top-rated pop music station, interrupted the song "I Have a Boyfriend" by The Chiffons to report only that shots had been fired at JFK's motorcade, with no word on any injuries. As did most stations, KLIF, after airing its initial reports, then returned to normal programming as the newsroom waited for further bulletins to come in. Some who were on the air at the time later recalled that they thought someone was playing a sick joke until they realized it was real and started either continuous news coverage (if the station was a network affiliate) or instrumental or religious music interspersed with news bulletins (if the station was an independent). Interestingly, a lot of the initial bulletins reported that UsefulNotes/LyndonJohnson had possibly been hit in the arm by one of the bullets and was going in for treatment at Parkland Hospital alongside Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally (Johnson was unharmed, but instead went inside the hospital for a meeting with Kennedy's staff and the Secret Service to plan out their next moves in the event Kennedy died).

** Various audio records of radio stations' initial news bulletins about the assassination exist online. Some who were on the air at the time later recalled that they thought someone was playing a sick joke until they realized it was real and started either continuous news coverage (if the station was a network affiliate) or instrumental or religious music interspersed with news bulletins (if the station was an independent). The aircheck from [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Sf2EDvbDEg WTIC]] in Hartford, Connecticut has some amazing MoodWhiplash, as the station's news anchor interrupts a genial talk show where listeners were calling in to share Thanksgiving recipes or ask questions about collecting maple sap to deliver the first report of the assassination. In Dallas itself, KLIF, a leading, top-rated popular music station, interrupted the song "I Have a Boyfriend" by The Chiffons to report only that shots had been fired at JFK's motorcade, with no word on any injuries. As did most stations, KLIF, after airing its initial reports, then returned to normal programming as the newsroom waited for further bulletins to come in.

** Various audio records of radio stations' initial news bulletins about the assassination exist online. Some who were on the air at the time later recalled that they thought someone was playing a sick joke until they realized it was real and started either continuous news coverage (if the station was a network affiliate) or instrumental or religious music interspersed with news bulletins (if the station was an independent). In Dallas itself, KLIF, a leading, top-rated popular music station, interrupted the song "I Have a Boyfriend" by The Chiffons to report only that shots had been fired at JFK's motorcade, with no word on any injuries. As did most stations, KLIF, after airing its initial reports, then returned to normal programming as the newsroom waited for further bulletins to come in.

* Creator/{{PBS}} likes to stand apart from its American brethren by {{avert|edTrope}}ing this trope. It routinely airs its normal programming when the other channels have interrupted theirs. It ''occasionally'' preempts regular programming, but not nearly to the extent of the other channels and usually for things of importance to the functioning of the federal government (y'know, the entity that kinda owns the network) like congressional hearings and impeachment trials[[note]]During the [[UsefulNotes/RichardNixon Watergate hearings]], nothing was sacred on PBS -- neither ''Series/SesameStreet'' nor ''Series/TheElectricCompany'' nor ''Series/MisterRogersNeighborhood''[[/note]]. It's only the ''really'' big events that force an interruption, and even then for odd reasons; for instance, on [=9/11=] the local New York affiliate was knocked off the air because its transmitter happened to be on top of the World Trade Center, and during the Covid pandemic, some PBS children's programming was pre-empted for ''educational'' children's programming as a way to fill in for the closed schools. In some cases some (but not all) stations will break into programming for the death of someone important, but it will either be a huge deal (''e.g.'' Queen UsefulNotes/ElizabethII) or related to the network itself (''e.g.'' Creator/FredRogers).

* Thirteen minutes into a local broadcast of ''WesternAnimation/TheWoodyWoodpeckerShow'' on September 18, 2001 on [=WTTG=] in Washington D.C., [[https://archive.org/details/WTTG_20010918_180000_The_Woody_Woodpecker_Show/start/720/end/780 the show was interrupted]] for a White House address on the events of September 11th that lasted for nine minutes before the show resumed.

** When UsefulNotes/ElizabethII died, Creator/{{CBBC}} - which up to that point had been continuing to air normally, while most of the BBC’s other channels had already switched their broadcasts to BBC News to cover the developing situation - continued to show the regular-scheduled broadcast of ''Series/BluePeter'', then [[https://youtu.be/ZoflHZ9N3b0 ran a brief announcement from a continuity host that there was important news from ''Newsround'']] (the channel's news programme for children), ran a TV spot for ''WesternAnimation/ShaunTheSheep''[[note]] probably to buy a little more time for the anchor of ''Newsround'' to change into somber clothes, which was part of the section on how to announce the death of the Queen in the official contingency plan, codenamed [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_London_Bridge Operation London Bridge]][[/note]], then went to a special report on the Queen's death from ''Newsround'', which in keeping with its typical reports, did ''not'' [[LiesToChildren sugar coat what had happened, instead simply presenting it in a way that was more understandable for its audience]]. After the conclusion of the report, the channel went back to regular programming, possibly as a safe haven for kids to go to if the news became too overwhelming (much like some children's channels in the US and Canada did during 9/11). However, Creator/CBeebies averted this, and just played the usual goodnight song. Probably because the channel was going to close down mere minutes after the announcement, and it probably didn't want to scare its target audience during the more soothing programming block played towards the end of the day.

** When UsefulNotes/ElizabethII died, Creator/{{CBBC}} - which up to that point had been continuing to air normally, while most of the BBC’s other channels had already switched their broadcasts to BBC News to cover the developing situation - continued to show the regular-scheduled broadcast of ''Series/BluePeter'', then [[https://youtu.be/ZoflHZ9N3b0 ran a brief announcement from a continuity host that there was important news from]] ''[[https://youtu.be/ZoflHZ9N3b0 Newsround]]'' (the channel's news programme for children), ran a TV spot for ''WesternAnimation/ShaunTheSheep''[[note]] probably to buy a little more time for the anchor of ''Newsround'' to change into somber clothes, which was part of the section on how to announce the death of the Queen in the official contingency plan, codenamed [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_London_Bridge Operation London Bridge]][[/note]], then went to a special report on the Queen's death from ''Newsround'', which in keeping with its typical reports, did ''not'' [[LiesToChildren sugar coat what had happened, instead simply presenting it in a way that was more understandable for its audience]]. After the conclusion of the report, the channel went back to regular programming, possibly as a safe haven for kids to go to if the news became too overwhelming (much like some children's channels in the US and Canada did during 9/11). However, Creator/CBeebies averted this, and just played the usual goodnight song. Probably because the channel was going to close down mere minutes after the announcement, and it probably didn't want to scare its target audience during the more soothing programming block played towards the end of the day.

** Radio stations (including popular music stations) play sombre and/or classical music. For example, when Princess Diana died, radio stations played (e.g. the ''Series/TwinPeaks'' theme) for the entire morning, with a repeating message (from Independent Radio News for the commercial stations) as explanation, this continued for two or three days, and even when normal programming resumed it seemed that {{Britpop}} had not survived the interlude, as many stations had used the downtime as an opportunity to replace the tracks they had in rotation, largely supplanting the genre's dominance.

* When UsefulNotes/ElizabethII died, Creator/{{CBBC}} - which up to that point had been continuing to air normally, while most of the BBC’s other channels had already switched their broadcasts to BBC News to cover the developing situation - continued to show the regular-scheduled broadcast of ''Series/BluePeter'', then [[https://youtu.be/ZoflHZ9N3b0 ran a brief announcement from a continuity host that there was important news]], ran a TV spot for ''WesternAnimation/ShaunTheSheep''[[note]] probably to buy a little more time for the anchor of the CBBC's news programme to change into somber clothes, which was part of the section on how to announce the death of the Queen in the official contingency plan, codenamed [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_London_Bridge Operation London Bridge]][[/note]], then went to a special report on the Queen's death from the CBBC's news show, ''Newsround'', which in keeping with its typical reports, did ''not'' [[LiesToChildren sugar coat what had happened, instead simply presenting it in a way that was more understandable for its audience]]. After the conclusion of the report, the channel went back to regular programming, possibly as a safe haven for kids to go to if the news became too overwhelming (much like some children's channels in the US and Canada did during 9/11). However, Creator/CBeebies averted this, and just played the usual goodnight song. Probably because the channel was going to close down mere minutes after the announcement, and it probably didn't want to scare its target audience during the more soothing programming block played towards the end of the day.