Local Breaking News

I've never known Granada or BBC North West to break into programmes, although I remember on a couple of occassions when Granada would flash up a slide with 'Weather Report' on it, which always meant something bad.

I know, for instance, local radio break into programming. Radio Shropshire have done it a few times recently for weather and traffic 'urgent' updates.

As for Midlands Today, well, I suppose the nearest thing that came close to a breaking news service for BBC Shropshire TV. It was quite handy for updating stories but, to be honest, I don't think I can remember MT ever breaking into programmes, as such. What's more common is for 'breaking news' to be delivered during MT or for regional reporters to end up on News 24, as was the case with the collapse of MG Rover.

I always think there's a lack of urgency in regional reporting, rightly or wrongly. It often leads to a more concise and analysed perspective. But, as one poster has already said, this tends to lead to 'Specials' and extended editions rather than a leap into the schedules.

I haven't seen any regional TV breaks in the last decade. In 1991 Tyne Tees did have a 2-minute news report at around 12.30am telling the region about the Meadow Well riots on Tyneside, and there were about half a dozen other times that I recall (over a ten or so year period) where the continuity announcer would voice a newsflash over a "News" slide rather than running a promo, telling us all to tune into the local news later for full details (this is a newsbreak in its most basic form I guess). TTTV have on a number of occasions cancelled network programming at short notice including Coronation Street to cover football teams running through their cities when they've some cup or other, but this probably doesn't count.

I do not recall BBC NE ever doing this, nor do I have any recollection of this happening post-1993.

as good as the service was - it couldnt really be classed as up-to-the-minute, iirc it was updated once or twice a day

BBC NWT broke into their final report at around 6.50 once to run with some breaking news of a train crash but didnt bother hanging around and handed back to the Six update at 6.55 and Gordon Bunrs pointed us towards News 24.

News 24 had NWT's local correspondent on air live from the scene by this time, so seemed the logical thing to do.

Dodgy dealings: Off-contract payments to players and under-reporting gates to avoid paying more tax. The chairman was eventually jailed for the whole affair, Swindon ended up in Division Two and were eventually promoted into the Premiership a few years later. It was good back then, not so much now. Two down at Mansfield in the bottom rung of the league. At least Oxford are lower.

I am fairly sure that Granada did a newsflash on the Manchester bombing in 1996, before ITN put anything together.

Granada got the IRA coded message and alerted the police, then went and did a newsflash announcing that the police were evacuating the city centre.

Still find it absolutely amazing, though, that given they had about an hour's warning of the bomb going off they didn't manage to have any cameras out on the streets at the time. Pretty shoddy, really.

And oddly it's only been recently (the last year or so) that CCTV images of the explosion have been made public.

They also ran a strap calling all NHS staff to report to Dumfries Infirmary. I suppose Border News would have been broadcasting live continuously too.