April Fool's Joke On Local TV Goes Awry

 

Back before Amazon and Microsoft's huge growth, Seattle had an image as a fun quirky town, kind of a break from the normalness of the regular world.  There was a show that came on which was locally called Almost Live!.  It was a not unlike SNL which celebrated the area's quirkiness, it would come after the local news on KING 5 TV and it would delay the showing of SNL.  It featured a group of local players.  

In 1989, the show decided to do an April Fool's prank about the collapse of the Space Needle, which like the legendary broadcast of War Of The Worlds caused a panic from viewers thinking that it was real. 

Thank you to Facebook friend Felix Banel, here is Almost Live! host John Keister's recollection of that event.

Today, locally produced TV is rare and Seattle has lost much of it's quirky image.