While the days of the fake format change for the day are mostly behind us, radio still comes out swinging regularly with pranks every April 1.
We’re still calling Kars4Kids switch to Kids4Kars as the best move of the day with their commercials airing on multiple stations across the country.
Greater Media Classic Hits 105.7 WROR Boston is airing all their non-music elements in Spanish branded as “Samba 105.7“. The station cited the Spanish elements this morning as part of USWTF Regulations for necessary SAP guidelines for radio.
In Montreal, Bell Media’s two English language stations traded frequencies for the 7:00am hour. CHR “Virgin Radio 96” aired on 97.7 CHOM with CHOM’s Rock format on 95.9 CJFM. Virgin shared some of the responses here.
Down in Norfolk, VARTV.com shares that Max Media’s four FM’s are swapping air personalities for the day. Hosts from Classic Hits “92.9 The Wave” WVBW, Sports “ESPN Radio 94.1” WVSP, Country “97.3 The Eagle” WGH, and CHR “Hot 100.5” WVHT are all airing on different stations within their cluster all day.
Premiere Radio Network’s 24/7 Comedy has gone Red for the day. Featuring comedy bits from the Cold War era, Russian ex-patriots like Yakov Smirnoff, and American comedians of Russian heritage like Eugene Mirman and Daniel Kinno, the network is satirizing recent events in the Crimea by being annexed by the Soviets for the day.
Radio Today Australia shares the best pranks done in Australia, while the unaffiliated but similarly named RadioToday does the same for the United Kingdom.
Know of any April Fools stunts that we’ve missed? Let us know in the comments below.
Eric Jon Magnuson 
1l6e6vhf 
Steve Brack
Current has a broader (and apparently ongoing) rundown of public-media pranks, at http://www.current.org/2014/04/pubmedia-outlets-pull-april-fools-pranks. I’m not sure if it was done on-air, but the supposed rebranding of Radio Kansas as “National Public Radio” caught my eye (partly because of the rationale: that NPR hasn’t officially used the full name itself for the past few years).
It would make sense that WROR did this. Greater Media did it about 20 years ago with WCSX (94.7) Birmingham MI (Detroit market).
The funniest part was a parody of a breaker they had been using in English all along, done in Spanish, it said “Noventa y cuatro punto siete, dobel-oo ceh ese equis, es..(Oye Coma Va by Santana heard)…Noventa y cuatro punto siete, dobel-oo ceh ese equis, es..(La Bamba by Los Lobos heard)…Noventa y cuatro punto siete, dobel-oo ceh ese equis, NO es..(Macarena by Los Del Rio heard)”.
On April Fool’s Day 1993, San Diego station KGB reported that the space shuttle would be making an emergency landing at San Diego’s Montgomery Field.
Space Shuttle Lands in San Diego – April Fool’s Day 1993 –
http://j.mp/1s5b6BR