Alan Johnston, missing journalist RELEASED

Sky News just showed a few idents of the channels (even CNN who aren't actually broadcasting the special at the moment) with one piece of music over them.

Sky have opted out now.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/233/456540497_310565324f.jpg

Looks like they did a 5 min job doing a google search looking for channel idents and then chucked it on top!

It's really simple - the BBC phone up Sky and ask them for the technical details about their uplink, then they point a dish at that satellite. The same with the Al Jazeera live position. If the Foriegn office truck was a terrestrial link then it would have gone from Sky to the BBC on one of the dedicated lines between the 2.

Sky, the BBC and ITN share facilities all the time, in the form of pool feeds where they share footage. Similarly all will use third party services like those of AP, so all the technical bits are fairly easy as they are all used to linking up with each other

I'd have thought it was a BBC News production team, using a Sky links van for Boulton, Al Jazeera links in Gaza, and then packages from CNN and Al Jazeera.

The Opening (BBC News 24 Broadcast)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iY5GHcphIWE

The Closing (BBC News 24 Broadcast)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2TeRn2CJUs

Can u update the clip titles to spell his name right

Oppsy. Have been updated.

Interesting that all the contributions, except the BBC's, were in full 16:9 (16F16).
The BBC's (ironically) were 14:9 pillarbox (14P16).

Or at least the portions I saw on the two You Tube links were such.

A beautiful programme, and beautiful to see journalists from four different channels working at the same programme. Shame CNN chose not to broadcast it and Skynews opted out after only 15 mins.

Seems a bit odd that Sky News opted out half way...did they really have something so important to show for the next 15 minutes? I just assumed the reason Bowen made a long pause was to allow for Sky and Al-Jazeera to go to adverts (if they were running them) .

All in all it was a very good collaborative attempt by all concerned. To those who have been saying it's pointless to essentially 'hijack' BBC channels for a 'BBC cause' seem to have completely missed the point - and hopefully by watching the programme they will be able to see things differently. This is about journalism - not the BBC, and certainly not propaganda. I recommend this article from the MediaGuardian a couple of weeks ago to shed some light on the real issue underlying this programme. The programme won’t single-handedly spark Alan’s release but it will certainly raise awareness for his cause and for journalists who put their lives on the line to report from some of the most perilous areas of the world, like Gaza.