There are now a few references on various Message Boards, including NIR, about an announcement during the Monkees premiere episode about a car crash involving one of the Beatles on Sept 12 1966. This announcement apparently took place in the NY/NJ/PA area only and then there was no follow up after the initial newsbreak. Does anyone have any info or personal recollection regarding this?
I should add that I’m not asking because I think Paul died; there’s a story here irrespective of Paul’s fate and the following clip from the next day, September 13th 1966 at the Melody Maker awards sure seems to be the shiny Pre- Sgt. Pepper Paul.
I’m more interested in when this story of a car accident first was introduced, and this would be the earliest reference that I am aware of.
Cool 
Hello;
I heard the announcement during the Monkees TV show back in ’66. I was watching what I remember to be the first show of the series and during a commercial break an announcer came on and said “a member of the Beatles pop group involved in a fatal car crash, story at eleven” which was the time that the network news came on in the NYC metro area where I lived (30 miles east of Manhattan). I stayed up way past midnight waiting and waiting for ‘the story’. The story never came and, no mention was ever made again about the announcement, not in the next day’s newspapers nor on the next day’s TV news. Strange, huh ? Some have said that this was a way to put it into our heads that a ‘change’ had been made in the group; others have said this was a way to put our focus on just one member (Paul) when in reality, all four had been swapped out for new players of each member of the group. Cognitive dissonance, anyone ?
I lived in Maryland near DC and heard the same newscast while watching the Monkees in the afternoon right after school (5th grade). I also sat up to hear the terrible story and got faked out like everybody else. Who had the power to pull the story, and how did the talented replacement appear so soon, by Christmas as your video at EMI shows, all the guys smiling and ‘upbeat’, in a bad acting way.
Hi… By “premiere” I assume you mean this was the first ever episode of the first ever series of The Monkees’ show? Sorry to come across as daft, but, this promised bulletin of a Beatles fatality is quite symbolic to me. After all, The Monkees were the ‘mop-top’, ‘Fab Four’ ‘Hard Days Night’ replacement for the original version which – by September ’66 – had just about phased out thanks to the end of live touring and the bubblegum Pop recordings. The Beatles had shed this image – quite literally if we’re to believe McCartney – for a new identity… The Sgt. Pepper persona… The Lords of Acid and the counter-culture… The dying mop-top Beatles were passing on the mantle to the new replacements.
Sorry I don’t have any personal recollections of the ‘newsflash’ (I wasn’t even born then), but I hope you don’t mind me throwing my hat in any way! I see some symbolism here that the TV networks (or those pulling the strings back then) might have actually have used in order to fry with peoples’ brains ahead of what was to become P.i.D. A bit of occult symbology in the media – a common occurrence in music-videos and such-like now of course.
I thought I might be able to search out the original episode which is not impossible to do. Funny thing, in the first episode there’s a character named ‘Bettina’ which turns out to be the name of a child born to a woman that had an alleged affair with James Paul McCartney, not the latter Paul known as ‘Faul’. Anyway, it seems that NBC may not have kept complete episodes including the originally run commercials.
The case regarding Bettina actually went to court in the 80s. “Faul” was forced to provide a photo and dna sample, which of course was NOT a match.
It was a blood sample. Not DNA.