Here’s All the Weirdness Around How Prince Philip’s Death Was Announced

Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh and husband to Queen Elizabeth II, has died aged 99.

His death was announced via a media statement and a tweet on the Royal Family’s official account.

BBC One cut away from live programming to tell viewers the news.

But the announcement appeared to catch some publications out.

Children’s TV channel CBBC continued broadcasting but notified viewers of a “major news report”, while entertainment channel Dave paused broadcasting altogether.

Sky Sports News urged people to visit Sky News for a “major breaking news story”, and got accused of clickbaiting in the process, in a tweet that was later deleted.

By this point, the official announcement of Prince Philip’s death had also been physically placed on the gates of Buckingham Palace.

While giant screens at an otherwise deserted Aintree Racecourse in Liverpool beamed a tribute to the Duke of Edinburgh.

ITV cancelled an episode of panel show Loose Women out of respect for the Duke, and BBC One decided to delay the broadcast of the MasterChef final as it paused all non-news content for the day.

Meanwhile, in the US, it took literally minutes for a broadcast host to mention an interview by Prince Harry – Prince Philip’s grandson – and Meghan Markle with Oprah Winfrey.

“There are reports that he was enraged after the interview and the fallout from the interview with Oprah Winfrey, so here he is trying to recover and then he gets hit with that,” said Fox and Friends host Brian Kilmeade.

Nothing, however, comes close to this transition on BBC radio. Wait for it…