Coronavirus | Television News Coverage

Well we are past 6:30pm now and they are still going. It seems a lot of regional newspaper journalists have been invited to this one, so I suspect the BBC would have left it at some point anyway had it not started late.

It's been the most enlightening conference to date. I've got Foxtrot Alpha to do over the next few months, I'm inclined to raise an FoI request, to find out the name of the individual at the Beeb that made the call

This was the explanation:

Good to know we have TV experts in Debra to help us out. Choices are: employ another team of gallery and studio staff putting them at risk/stopping them from being at home, delay the most watched news bulletin in the country by two hours or what they did. You choose.

— Peter Ruddick (@ruddick) April 2, 2020

We are all armchair critics, but it was certainly a balancing act. Could they have let the presser run and just hard start the 6 when it finished? Yes, but I suppose it would've caused problems with the timed running order and a headache for BBC One scheduling at the last minute (and also the regions).

Worth noting that the online feed on the BBC News website cut straight back to the presser after Clive threw to the weather, without lower thirds.

Peter getting in a Twitter spat with a viewer, whilst what he was saying is completely valid, wasn't the best choice though.

Tennis and football matches have delayed the sic sacrosanct 6pm news, I can't understand why this didn't happen tonight.
We are in grave trouble nationally, who gives a fcuk if BBC1's schedule gets mucked up. All our lives are mucked up for months, if not years ahead

The press conference could have been hard routed to the News Channel Tx chain, if the Beeb really couldn't delay or abandon the 6pm news. Sorry, but pulling the safety card is rather cynical

Yes, no reason not to let it overrun other than two reasons IMO:

- they had sight of the questions coming up and decided they weren't covering anything that would add anything to the story of the day

- that due to staffing issues in the regions although delaying the Six and One Show might be fine, it could cause problems with the regional news.


Understandable at the moment why it would have to be either on both One and the News Channel or neither. Personally I think having shown them all on BBC1 so far they should have stuck with it if they could, but I also think there is a bit of news conference fatigue, not just from viewers but figures in the industry are questioning them too, and I suspect they'll be bumped to BBC2 in the not too distant future. Heck as the difficult questions are now beginning to be asked of the government they'll probably be dumped all together sooner or later.

From what it seems they were caught a bit on the hoof. It can't be easy as they're bound to be operating on skeleton gallery crews. World News weren't taking the presser so there was no point re-routing their output to the NC.

I suppose the only way to avoid it happening again is for World News to take the presser as well and should it overrun, for the News channel to join them just before 6 with the NC presenter telling viewers on BBC One to switch over to to the NC to watch the rest.

It's refreshing to see people who actually work in the media call out the armchair critics who know little or nothing about how these things work.



It seems that BBC One isn't showing the daily briefings from tomorrow onwards. I agree that probably they'll either shift them to BBC Two or News Channel or the Government will limit them to weekly

There's calling people out and being rude. Sadly the Twitter poster above bordered on the latter. Explain it clearly to the person asking and then just leave it at that.

It's clear a lot of people are at end of their tether and they don't need ill-informed people telling them how to do their job.

Well many of the questions are the same every day anyway, but they still usually show it to the end

And regarding the regions, if they start late, then they’d finish late. It’s not exactly unusual, the amount of times the bulletins particularly the late one get delayed due to sport. I’m sure they wouldn’t all down tools dead on 7pm and walk off the job

If Wimbledon was on, they wouldn’t care about disrupting the ‘most watched bulletin of the day’

Inevitable but you'd expect Boris to be back to do one over the next few days. Guess they can make the call based on who is doing them though - but is a risk removing them from BBC1 this soon (I was thinking probably after Easter) actually downplays it's continued impact.

Also possible that he might comeback with a Primeminsterial Broadcast instead - is getting to the point now where he needs to find a fridge to hide in.

My question there would be what would happen if it ended when the Six was in mid flow? They certainly wouldn't have had a presenter in a studio to pick up off the back of it and just crashing into the Six would've looked pretty clumsy.