Prince Philip has Died

[XIII]

Is the sombre clothing rule until after the funeral or the day after?

[Orry Verducci]

How did the BBC NC gallery load the pre-prepared obit packages and sequences so quick... From the news broke on NC to the "black news report slide" shows up, there's only 4 minutes to drop everything in the Viz sequence and load the obit packages from the server to the gallery.

From what I heard it takes quite a time to load a show's sequence given the amount of data and often times certain packages might not yet arrive at the gallery from the server by the time programmes and shows start. Remember this is not your ordinary breaking news protocol where the director just cut to the presenter's vision and pop up a few images...

If it’s anything like Sky there would be a running order (prepared in the last bridges rehearsal) hidden away somewhere with all the graphics, obit packages and overlay which could easily be loaded and run.

I believe it's fairly standard practice across the industry to make sure that all the Obit VT and playlists are always available on the playout servers so they're ready to go at a moments notice. This is certainly the case where I work, we keep all the announcement slates on our playout servers, marked as 'delete protected', so we can cut in to programmes at short notice as we did on Friday. I'd be very surprised if this isn't the case at BBC News, as the last thing you want is to be stuck filling time while you wait for clips to transfer to the server.

It also helps that his death didn't come as a huge surprise. Given his age and poor health of late I've made sure to double check on a few occasions over the last few weeks that his Obit slate and playlist were definitely on the server, as my gut feeling was we'd need it soon. I'm sure my colleagues at the BBC would have done the same.

I’m immensely proud of the BBC and I’m reasonably fond of the royal family. However.....

The BBC got it wrong on Friday. The coverage itself was excellent, Martine is probably my favourite newsreader and she was the epitome of professionalism, the wobbles in her voice was probably nerves if anything. Completely understandable. But BBC1/2/news was overkill.

This pretty much sums up my view perfectly.

They dealt with the announcement brilliantly, and I completely agree with BBC One's schedules being cleared for continuous coverage. I even agree with them breaking in to all channels to make the announcement, but I do think BBC Two should have left the coverage after a couple hours and provided alternative viewing, albeit with some schedule changes. I also think it was overkill to take BBC Four off air, especially when it was scheduled to show a live sport event.

I think there's lots of questions to be asked with how BBC Radio dealt with it as well. In particular how long Radio 1 and 2 were simulcasting Radio 4, as after the initial announcement and coverage I don't see why they couldn't have returned to their own output with the appropriate playlists and news updates. Listeners of those stations likely don't want to hear continous speech, and so in my eyes they freely handed listeners over to their competition at Global, who handed it perfectly.

[Dan]

I know it's obviously not at the top of their priority list, but it's interesting that BBC hasn't yet rescheduled Friday's cancelled EastEnders episode. ITV have announced extra episodes for Corrie & Emmerdale next week in order to catch up, but nothing from BBC.

[Ash101]

I do wonder how much the current Covid situation changed the planned Obit procedure. Maybe more for the radio simulcasting than the TV news. But with the Duke having been in hospital only about a month ago, I can imagine what we saw on Friday was reviewed/signed off very recently.

I know there's been plenty of chat about the reasoning behind BBC Four not being on could've been technical - but presumably had the announcement came after 7pm, Four would've opted into the announcement alongside One & Two anyway?

[CameronYoung]

I know it's obviously not at the top of their priority list, but it's interesting that BBC hasn't yet rescheduled Friday's cancelled EastEnders episode. ITV have announced extra episodes for Corrie & Emmerdale next week in order to catch up, but nothing from BBC.

I think the BBC are taking it all day-by-day, whereas ITV have all planned ahead at least a couple of days. I think bar the extended soaps on Monday I'd expect next week till Thursday to go out as planned (unless they planned a non-Duke doc).

Something I was thinking - if ITV decided to air something different (perhaps to give a break and potentially dampen the 60% drop in ratings) in the 7pm slot (pushing Julie & Schofie back an hour) or the 9pm slot and keep Chris Ship's doc for this week, what programmes could be deemed "safe"? Or am I mis-interpreting what should/should not happen.

[Brekkie]

It's worth remembering the 60% drop in ratings doesn't hurt ITV as much financially as they can reschedule all the dropped advertising over the next few weeks, and also have the kudos for their news coverage on the day. As much as they could have taken a 90 minute break for the soaps, the fact they didn't somewhat strengthens the ITV News brand.

Surprised they didn't opt to drop Tipping Point tonight for the displaced Corrie though rather than pushing Mondays back to Tuesday.

[Transmission]

I know there's been plenty of chat about the reasoning behind BBC Four not being on could've been technical - but presumably had the announcement came after 7pm, Four would've opted into the announcement alongside One & Two anyway?

Yes. I believe News would then have provided a suitable point to opt out after about 15 minutes.

[Ash101]

I know there's been plenty of chat about the reasoning behind BBC Four not being on could've been technical - but presumably had the announcement came after 7pm, Four would've opted into the announcement alongside One & Two anyway?

Yes. I believe News would then have provided a suitable point to opt out after about 15 minutes.

For Four to then close down?

Had the announcement came after 7pm, surely the outcome of the rest of Four’s output wouldn’t have been any different? I doubt they’d have simulcast all evening alongside One & Two?

[Rob]

https://twitter.com/skynewsSam/status/13...1058969600

[RDJ]

One other slightly picky criticism about the coverage I forgot to mention is how the cross- channel service was referenced as ‘The BBC’ rather than ‘BBC Television’.

It devalues the rest of the BBC in thinking that ‘the BBC’ is just its television service. Especially when there’s much criticism with the value of the licence fee - it would have been better to reference it as ‘BBC Television’ to separate it from its radio and online counterparts. It leaves you to question what actually is ‘the BBC’.

And also the awful barely legible sombre ITV ident. That was slightly baffling. Especially as everyone’s favourite announcer starting announcing over it on Saturday morning, but I think he actually didn’t do too bad reflecting the serious tone.

[Jeff]

That's exactly how it feels to some of us, as if they're trying to enforce grief and mourning...

The notion that the BBC were trying to 'force' people to grief and mourn Prince Philip's passing is a bizarre one because it assumes we still live in an era where the only viewing options are the five main PSB channels. As RDJ articulated very well, there are whole range of channels and streaming services people could have turned to if they didn't want to watch (or wanted a break from) the rolling coverage. As such, not only couldn't the corporation literally 'force' people to watch the coverage but they themselves were offering one of the main alternatives in the iPlayer

[Frances]

Thanks. Interesting how the networks quite seemlessly enabled the rest of the network to join the breakfast shows on the east coast at a flick of a button. I think that is the one slight criticism of the BBC yesterday that they couldn't get on air on BBC1 as BBC News broke the news.

Yes the only thing I think they could have done better was if they hadn’t pre-announced it on the BBC News Channel and hence also on BBC Two.

They could either have got Martine to introduce the second scheduled report about Covid, or even just run it without introducing it, or maybe even just gone into breakfiller until everything was in order to opt into BBC One

Thanks. Interesting how the networks quite seemlessly enabled the rest of the network to join the breakfast shows on the east coast at a flick of a button. I think that is the one slight criticism of the BBC yesterday that they couldn't get on air on BBC1 as BBC News broke the news.

Back to the Easter Saturday in 2002, the newsroom staff is informed the embargoed announcement of the passing of the Queen mother 20 minutes before the newsflash, according to Peter Sissons.

The BBC’s monopoly on broadcasting a royal obit has gone, it seems like they did not aware of this sad news before the official statement came out. The palace released the statement at noon, if the Beeb was pre-brief they could just run the obit at 12 across BBC One, Two and News, and arrange for Huw Edwards to read the announcement.

[Blobs]

Considering radio is a much more intimate medium, and one that people really depend on, I thought the length of the all-networks broadcast was overkill (some old boy's insight-free anecdotes on Radio 1, for heaven's sake)

Indeed, simulcasting Radio 4 on Radio 1 and 1xtra for hours one end really is one of the inexplicable things about this. It's hard to think of something more alienating to the target audience, much more so than taking BBC2 and 4 off air.

Yeah, why didn't they utilise Newsbeat? is the question I'm most interested to hear the answer to.

[richard110888]

https://twitter.com/skynewsSam/status/13...1058969600

Lots of nasty comments on Twitter as we have come to expect but lots praising her too

[skynewsfreak]

Tweet from the BBC News director on shift at the time:

https://twitter.com/janetmcallen/status/...3395130371