With 24 rolling news channels, it seems that we don't get 'News flashes' any more.
They were a staple growing up - a tv show would be interrupted by the screen filled with 'NEWS FLASH' and an announcer apologising for interrupting the scheduled programme.
Question - what is the most recent news flash you can remember?
short answer is yes, unless it really is dead-princess-standard news, they'll normally keep it for the news channels. Actual news websites (the BBC or the Guardian, eg) have a Breaking News marquee
Probably the Iranian embassy. 9/11 & 7/7 occurred during scheduled news broadcasts and Diana was broken for most while waking up on the Sunday morning. The first I knew something was up was the dire mournful music on a poppy radio station and then the announcement.
We've had rolling news for so many years now that I can't tell apart the ones which were 'breaking' on the rolling news and the ones which were genuine 'we interrupt this programme' type events, affecting the main channels.
I may be mistaken but didn't Diana's death occur in the post rolling-news era?
9/11 happened in the middle of the day and was the first thing you saw when you got back from work, so the programme interruption part wasn't experienced by that many of us.
1990s.... hmm. Nothing memorable (but I'll probably kick myself when I get a memory jogger and it was something mega)
Prior to that, Lockerbie, Brighton. Generally the ones where the report dragged on for an hour or more.
they still do this, called breaking news, the BBC, Sky News do it,
can't really remember, these all merge into one, bad news is bad news i guess, the biggest in recent years the July bombings in London, but i didn't need the news to tell me about that as i wasn't far from it when the bus bomb went off.