England 1930 and as the nation settled down infront of their wireless sets for the 20:45 news bulletin, they were told 'Good Evening. Today is Friday 18th April…there is no news today' and instead listened to piano music for the rest of the 15-minute segment.
Back then the BBC did not have a News Department and relied upon outside agencies and newspapers for their news, compiling news bulletins from information sent by the British news agencies via teletype but on April 18 1930, the BBC chiefs decided that none of the stuff they received was particularity newsworthy so decided to go with nothing instead.
In the age of 24 hour news and access to Worldwide News Agencies via the internet, it is hard to think that it could happen today but something i heard a lot during my career is: 'I don't watch the news anymore because it's so depressing' and i agree, a lot of the stuff in the news is wars, corruption, murders and lot's of other stuff that makes you just want to put your head in your hands and so maybe sometimes just saying nothing newsworthy happened today would be a welcome relief.
According to a computer algorithm the ultimate slow news day was 11 April 1954 which it has identified as the most boring day in history as there were absolutely no key news events or births and deaths of famous people.
Of course with all the social media and internet pages news journalists have at our fingertips, being unable to find a story is just lazy journalism because if you dig deep enough there's always a story out there and if not, just make something up about the weather and quote 'a source' but don't mention that your source was
actually your Auntie Joan who said that it's going to be a wet summer because her budgie has been spending a lot of time at the bottom of it's cage recently.
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