How the BBC broke Diana's death

Cheers for that. The other odd thing about ITV would be that GMTV had to gain control at 6am. Anyone know was the ITN handover to GMTV (and vice-versa I suppose) handled? Especially as 5am-6am seemed such a pivotal time in the developing story.

In the unlikely event anyone else here bought Will Wyatt's book some years ago ("The Fun Factory - a Life at the BBC") there's a few interesting comments about the Diana coverage in there. (Really must finish reading that book...)

Also, trivia quiz - who here can remember the only non-Diana live OB that took place that day (on the BBC at least)? Answer below.



Digiguide doesn't yet go as far ahead as August 31st (or indeed the date of the funeral) but I'm rather assuming we *won't* get a replay of all the coverage. Which is a pity, although I hope its available in a national archive somewhere.

http://www.meldrum.co.uk/cgi/ra.asp?file=diana_death/extract_07.ra

The voiceover was creepily sombre too. I had a computer with a tv card at the time and I'm still a little disappointed that I didn't save any of it.

I'd initially flicked through BBC 1 and 2, and it twigged that something was little odd that they were showing the same things, and with a BBC DOG; then Nickelodeon was showing that caption, in their corporate font (the one with the arrows).

I remember that day strongly. I carried on with my life.

The subject of captions over regular programming reminds me of drunkenly returning home to find Saddam Hussein had been executed, BBC One was continuing with the Sign Zone with a massive "Major Breaking News on BBC Two Now" strap. BBC Two was obviously simulcasting with N24 but it must have been odd for anyone who recorded the sign zone that night when they watched it back.

Something else just drifted back to me: my dad wandered into the living room and thought I was watching some spoof news programme or something. So I dug out my The Day Today tape and watched some of that instead.

Yes, although clearly has much less significance than it used to what with only 4 TX centres (5 if you count Channel).

We used to have one of the red phones in our office till the refurb....memories!

I remember a few channels stopped all programming, I think QVC had a static caption and Disney had some slow motion footage of Diana or something like that. Also I very vaguely remember something odd with Sky One - like the programmes still had ad breaks in the same places and for the same lengths of time, but they didn't have adverts, just a graphic saying "In Memorium" or suchlike. Plus MTV got the obit tape out, so plenty of Enya all day long.

I was 16 at the time, my friends came over to get me because they were completely bored, so we all went out to see Men In Black. The cinema was doing good buisness that day. When we left we all paused by a TV shop window that was showing Charles by the plane taking the body back.

Agree with those that say the "BBC Television from London" announcement was one of the strangest parts of it all. You expected it to be followed by "a meteor is headed for the Earth and we all have 3 hours to live"!

I don't remember anything about TV on that day. I just remember Mum waking my eight year old self up and telling me the news.

I remember the day of the funeral, though, because I was watching cartoons on Channel 4 when they just suddenly faded one out halfway through and went straight to the funeral. *Majorly* annoyed me at the time, I dunno if I ever did see the end of that cartoon...

Funny thing was that Channel 4 got slammed for not providing coverage of the Funeral, ie from Channel 4 News, but on the same level Channel 4 was providing it's remit in being alternative, as to be fair really young children at the time wouldn't have had a clue of what was going on, so Cartoons were shown in place, but they opted out for the two minutes silence.

I remember the day of the Funeral, as there was a special GMTV from 6.00am to 8.30am and then coverage from ITN thereafter, but for some of the morning they also carried an 'IT=' DOG on the bottom right hand of the screen, but that was probably not confuse people as the same thing was being shown on BBC1, BBC2, ITV, Channel 5 and the vast majority of Sky channels.

Yeah, the day of the funeral was quite strange, as was the evening before, on the Friday. I have on tape somewhere the coverage on Sky News just leading up to the Queen's speech at 6pm, with Bob Friend and Lisa Aziz breaking the news of Mother Teresa's death. Then later in the evening BBC 1, ITV, Channel 4 News and 5 News all had live coverage of the coffin being moved between locations, with the 5 News set moodily lit and Kirsty - shock horror - actually sitting behind the desk.

At the time Sky never usually did special graphics (which these days they seem to do for any story that's going to last more than a day!) so it was interesting to see their 'sombre' package, withthe gold and blue on the astons reversed.

Also during the funeral itself, I remember Bloomberg and MSNBC's coverage often having a massive Sky News DOG in the corner (minus the clock). CNN would have been taking ITN.

On it's way up Finchley Road towards the M1, the procession went past the top of our road, so when we saw it was getting close, we all went outside to have a look.

Looking back, it was such a strange time, I think the whole country momentarily went a little bit loopy.

I remember that night too, ITN had to wait until the end of Coronation Street to break into the schedule to see the coffin being moved across London.

Because of what happened there was very little coverage about Mother Theresa's death, it was announced and the only channel that showed the funeral was Sky News.