Inspector Sands post_id=37977 time= user_id=1003 Wrote:Tom post_id=37967 time= user_id=1309 Wrote:Whilst browsing the old TV Forum, I found the original thread as it happened, and here it is: https://tvforum.uk/tvhome/world-trade-centre-35259
I like how people were asking if crossroads was coming back on. Also, interesting to note that BBC News 24 did not have a recognized presenter known to BBC1 viewers until Huw Edwards arrived.
Amusing now that someone couldn't watch the news because his dad was watching the History Channel.... rather than what we now know is actual history :lol:
:lol: Well, at least History Channel actually showed history stuff back then.
I have just seen on the BBC News schedule that on September 11, Laura Trevealyn is presenting a five hour special from New York at 1pm.
Tom post_id=37967 time= user_id=1309 Wrote:Whilst browsing the old TV Forum, I found the original thread as it happened, and here it is: https://tvforum.uk/tvhome/world-trade-centre-35259
I like how people were asking if crossroads was coming back on. Also, interesting to note that BBC News 24 did not have a recognized presenter known to BBC1 viewers until Huw Edwards arrived.
The Crossroads stuff there is amazing, though of course twenty years on we still have many examples on this forum of people taking the EPG absolutely literally ("it says CITV is on in five minutes!").
I've mentioned the BBC News presenters before, they took absolutely ages getting anyone familiar on, and that made it all the more unsettling, seeing the news delivered by people you'd never seen before, even Gavin Esler who was seemingly parachuted in as a senior figure wasn't that well-known. Seems bizarre that News 24 got priority over BBC1, especially in those days when it was absolutely the junior service. It's different now of course because all the presenters work across both, and of course the News channel itself is simulcast every day now.
The mention of Paxman there reminds me that Jeremy Vine was scheduled to present Newsnight that night, but they asked him if he wouldn't mind standing down in favour of Paxman if they could get him, as the senior presenter. But Paxman was on holiday and he couldn't get back in time, so Vine did do it in the end.
Inspector Sands post_id=37974 time= user_id=1003 Wrote:I'm not sure when the Afghanistan withdrawal was decided but those programmes were scheduled and promoted for weeks before.
I think it's just the BBC trying to get in first with their retrospectives, I'm pretty sure they've done the same with other anniversaries
Yes, one other aspect of course is that 11th September this year is a Saturday, and I don't think either of those programmes were suitable for a Saturday night slot, certainly on BBC1. I think also there is a convention that you don't always want to do these things on the day itself, I think quite often they want to leave the day itself for quiet reflection and nothing too controversial or upsetting.
Tom post_id=37967 time= user_id=1309 Wrote:Whilst browsing the old TV Forum, I found the original thread as it happened, and here it is: https://tvforum.uk/tvhome/world-trade-centre-35259
I like how people were asking if crossroads was coming back on. Also, interesting to note that BBC News 24 did not have a recognized presenter known to BBC1 viewers until Huw Edwards arrived.
Of note from perusing this is how different - if one may divert a bit - the set ups and outputs of the various broadcasters were. And also is how much of a presence in the "news world" ITN were back then. As what someone mentioned, "Being able to do feeds for ITV1, ITN News Channel, Channel 4 and Channel 5". What a difference 20 years makes.
Of course as well it was said that covering 9/11 , or more so being limited in how they could cover it, was part of the reason the ITN News Channel was moved under the ITV News Channel banner. The model of repackaging reports previously shown on ITV, C4 or C5 didn't work in that developing news situation.
ITV certainly benefitted from having the familar face of Kirsty Young on screen for most of the afternoon compared to the relatively unknown faces of BBC News 24. Did they do anything overnight though - either air their own coverage or take the ITN News Channel, or perhaps a US feed (CNN or NBC I'd guess)?
Tom post_id=37967 time= user_id=1309 Wrote:Whilst browsing the old TV Forum, I found the original thread as it happened, and here it is: https://tvforum.uk/tvhome/world-trade-centre-35259
I like how people were asking if crossroads was coming back on. Also, interesting to note that BBC News 24 did not have a recognized presenter known to BBC1 viewers until Huw Edwards arrived.
It was really interesting looking back through that thread - seeing my own contributions has brought back a lot of memories.
You can tell it was the early days of TV Forum if an event of that magnitude only generated 24 pages of discussion over the course of 2 months.
There was an era of BBC News, either before 9/11 or in the years after it, where they made a point of pushing BBC News 24 brand at every opportunity
So a news special on BBC One was a ‘BBC News 24 Special’, with News 24 presenters and they seemed to go through a period where they would simulcast on One or Two during the day for an hour or two for quite minor reasons, like bad weather.
Of course that all ended after a while, they dropped the News 24 name, started taking network bulletins, and simulcast on BBC Two routinely every day, and unscheduled simulcasts are almost the opposite way round now, the news channel taking BBC One rather than BBC One taking the news channel.
mark post_id=38073 time= user_id=1102 Wrote:Tom post_id=37967 time= user_id=1309 Wrote:Whilst browsing the old TV Forum, I found the original thread as it happened, and here it is: https://tvforum.uk/tvhome/world-trade-centre-35259
I like how people were asking if crossroads was coming back on. Also, interesting to note that BBC News 24 did not have a recognized presenter known to BBC1 viewers until Huw Edwards arrived.
It was really interesting looking back through that thread - seeing my own contributions has brought back a lot of memories.
You can tell it was the early days of TV Forum if an event of that magnitude only generated 24 pages of discussion over the course of 2 months.
It certainly is. I cropped up in the thread at about 5pm as I seem to remember I had a doctor's appointment after school. My mum told me of the news when she collected me from school to take me to the doctor's. Such as life was then, none of us in school, or certainly not in my classes, knew about it when it happened. Of course, no-one had smartphones (I think I had a Nokia by then but it would obviously have been switched off during school hours) and the only PCs - and a very small handful at that - were located in the school library.
This particular post shows my innocence really:
https://tvforum.uk/forums/post789863#post-789863. Quite moving reading that thread back and, indeed, it has become one of the few primary sources of the television presentation angle.
In terms of the shortness of the thread, I guess the explanation would be that the internet was pay per minute dial-up then. So as not to run up a huge phone bill, I used to dial in, download a page (excruciatingly slowly) and disconnect the line whilst reading it. I'd only connect again to post and/or download more. You couldn't just leave the internet connected 24/7 like we do now. Kids these days don't know they're born. Imagine having to download a single web page practically pixel by pixel. It took forever. Or better still, imagine not having the internet at all and having to, you know, read a book in the library :lol:
I have NO recollection of starting that thread, nor any of my (fairly banal) posts in it, some of which I no longer agree with (why on earth was I having a go at David Dimbleby? Have certainly changed my mind on that 20 years on…)
itsrobert post_id=38101 time= user_id=913 Wrote:In terms of the shortness of the thread, I guess the explanation would be that the internet was pay per minute dial-up then. So as not to run up a huge phone bill, I used to dial in, download a page (excruciatingly slowly) and disconnect the line whilst reading it. I'd only connect again to post and/or download more. You couldn't just leave the internet connected 24/7 like we do now. Kids these days don't know they're born. Imagine having to download a single web page practically pixel by pixel. It took forever.
remember too that on the day itself, there was a *lot* of demand for internet services, which were generally resourced for not everyone wanting to use them at once. At peak times, it sometimes took a few tries to connect to your ISP, but on the evening of 9/11 I seem to remember getting engaged tones for a good 20 minutes, followed by pages loading very slowly (or not at all).
thegeek post_id=38127 time= user_id=1372 Wrote:itsrobert post_id=38101 time= user_id=913 Wrote:In terms of the shortness of the thread, I guess the explanation would be that the internet was pay per minute dial-up then. So as not to run up a huge phone bill, I used to dial in, download a page (excruciatingly slowly) and disconnect the line whilst reading it. I'd only connect again to post and/or download more. You couldn't just leave the internet connected 24/7 like we do now. Kids these days don't know they're born. Imagine having to download a single web page practically pixel by pixel. It took forever.
remember too that on the day itself, there was a *lot* of demand for internet services, which were generally resourced for not everyone wanting to use them at once. At peak times, it sometimes took a few tries to connect to your ISP, but on the evening of 9/11 I seem to remember getting engaged tones for a good 20 minutes, followed by pages loading very slowly (or not at all).
It's crazy to think how far the world has come in 20 years. And scary to think where we will be in another 20. 2001 seems like a different lifetime ago.
thegeek post_id=38127 time= user_id=1372 Wrote:itsrobert post_id=38101 time= user_id=913 Wrote:In terms of the shortness of the thread, I guess the explanation would be that the internet was pay per minute dial-up then. So as not to run up a huge phone bill, I used to dial in, download a page (excruciatingly slowly) and disconnect the line whilst reading it. I'd only connect again to post and/or download more. You couldn't just leave the internet connected 24/7 like we do now. Kids these days don't know they're born. Imagine having to download a single web page practically pixel by pixel. It took forever.
remember too that on the day itself, there was a *lot* of demand for internet services, which were generally resourced for not everyone wanting to use them at once. At peak times, it sometimes took a few tries to connect to your ISP, but on the evening of 9/11 I seem to remember getting engaged tones for a good 20 minutes, followed by pages loading very slowly (or not at all).
I popped into an easyeverything cafe in central London on Sept 11th and they were sluggish too. I couldn't even stream a RealMedia video of the planes going into the World Trade Center. However by 2001 standards, they were better than using work 56k dial-up!
I remember that day coming home from school as a 14 year old and only person in house at time putting the telly on BBC one expecting CBBC as normal and seeing the reports of the plan hitting the towers. I think if I remember BBC one other than showing Eastenders ( where BBC Two then took the news channel for 30 minutes ) was just simulcasting news 24 until the following with a small break for the regional news. I think September 12 is the only time Channels 4 news was on at Breakfast replacing that morning’s big breakfast. Still one of the saddest days in history though.
Col87 post_id=38172 time= user_id=1400 Wrote:I remember that day coming home from school as a 14 year old and only person in house at time putting the telly on BBC one expecting CBBC as normal and seeing the reports of the plan hitting the towers. I think if I remember BBC one other than showing Eastenders ( where BBC Two then took the news channel for 30 minutes ) was just simulcasting news 24 until the following with a small break for the regional news. I think September 12 is the only time Channels 4 news was on at Breakfast replacing that morning’s big breakfast. Still one of the saddest days in history though.
I was slightly older, 16 and a half. I remember coming home from school, totally oblivious (although it had probably only happened an hour or so beforehand anyway), turning on Chris Moyles and hearing a song that was very downbeat and a few years old. "That's weird", I thought, "but okay, Radio 1 is allowed to play slow songs that are 5 years old, maybe it's a Moyles feature I missed that start of". Then a dry Radio 1 sting, followed by another downbeat slightly older music track. "Even weirder", I thought. After that song, Moyles somberly name checked the songs and then, at quarter to the hour, threw to Newsbeat. That moment was the first I heard of the news. Newsbeat was on every 15 minutes during Moyles show, and I think well into the morning after, all specialist music programmes dropped and a similar sombre Breakfast Show.
Apart from the IRA bombing campaign, which ended when I was 12, and I didn't fully understand, 9/11 is the first news event I remember in detail.
Col87 post_id=38172 time= user_id=1400 Wrote:I remember that day coming home from school as a 14 year old and only person in house at time putting the telly on BBC one expecting CBBC as normal and seeing the reports of the plan hitting the towers. I think if I remember BBC one other than showing Eastenders ( where BBC Two then took the news channel for 30 minutes ) was just simulcasting news 24 until the following with a small break for the regional news. I think September 12 is the only time Channels 4 news was on at Breakfast replacing that morning’s big breakfast. Still one of the saddest days in history though.
BBC1 showed both 'stEnders and Changing Rooms as scheduled that night, between 7.30 and 8.30, when the news continued on BBC2, and also a documentary about female bosses after the Ten, about half an hour later than billed, while Newsnight was on BBC2. ITV showed Emmerdale and Millionaire, plus also the Champions League highlights later in the evening, again later than billed - those matches went ahead as everyone was already in place, the following day's matches were cancelled.
The Big Breakfast was replaced for the rest of the week. That was during the period Channel Four were looking for replacements, and indeed Channel Four News worked so well in that slot in terms of ratings and in terms of critical acclaim for Krishnan Guru-Murthy that C4 decided that they should probably go for a more news-based show to replace The Big Breakfast than what they were originally anticipating, and quite a lot of the companies pitching for the slot tried to sign up Guru-Murthy, which is presumably why we ended up with RI:SE because of Sky News' involvement.
Shades here of what happened on Radio 1 after Diana died. Mark and Lard were on breakfast at the time but they were on holiday when it happened and Kevin Greening stood in, and he worked so well there that they asked Mark and Lard to stay off for another week, partly because they thought it would be too abrupt a change (in The Nation's Favourite Andy Parfitt says that they were supposed to come back the Monday after the funeral, but if they didn't mention it, it would sound weird, and if they did the audience might go "well, we've done all this, we don't need to do it again"), and also, Greening later suggested, he assumed they wanted him to do a more normal show to look to giving him the job permanently, which of course they did.
Of course, Mark and Lard were actually on air when 9/11 happened. I'd started a new job two weeks earlier and we had Radio 1 on in the office, and the first I think we heard of it was the 2.30 news, after which Mark Radcliffe said "Well, in the light of that news we'll just be playing music for the rest of the show". Moyles then took over at three but we then switched over to Five Live for the rest of the day.