How the BBC broke Diana's death

Jeff Smith, Head of Radio 1 Music Policy who found out Diana had died following a phone call from his senior, "We had Annie Nightingale on - the chill out zone. They'd started playing some of the obituary CDs. I got a cab and I was in just before five.

There's a set of three emergency CDs in a little cupboard in each studio. CD (a) has sombre-ish mainly instrumental music, CD (b) is a mellower vocal-driven selection, and CD (c) is a let's come out of its scenario and move on. But they wer designed for your average royal person dying. If the Queen Mum died, we'd have our normal CD's and probable be out of it much faster than with Diana.

For Diana, the obituary Cds that we had didn't really seem good enough. So I started rotating thse five or six tracks and added to them through the day and from the emails we got the audience said they were quited like the selection. So we played tracks from the Apollo Four Forty album and 'Sabres of Paradise' and the film soundtrack Merry CHristmas Mr Lawrence, tracks without vocals to enable people to have their own thoughts.

Gradually we introduced George Michael - You Have Been Loved' and Massive Attack's - Unfinished Sympathy' , Missing You by Puff Daddy and Don't Go Away by Oasis. Originally when I heard the George Michael song I thought, Radio 2 record, but it was worked for us in the circumstances. I think we did do something different from other commerical stations. Capital played classical."

Source: Adapted from Simon Garfield's The Nation Favourite - The True Adventures of Radio 1

London 'Indie Music' station XFM was due to launch on the Monday morning (Sept 1st) , they were left in a particularly difficult position, but launched all the same.

Someone should probably start another thread but does anyone know how the likes of Radio 1 coped with September 11th. It should have been Mark and Lard on the air followed by Chris Moyles. Neither are exactly famous for serious broadcasting

I remember waking up pretty early for a Sunday and switching on the TV - something I didn't normally do whilst still in bed. Bleary eyed I flicked around the channels, did wonder a bit why there were no kids shows on and realised something when definitely up when I saw Kirsty Young behind a desk ! I watched for a couple of minutes but still couldn't figure out what was going on so went into the lounge and stuck Ceefax on. And there it was on the front page. I still remember shouting to my parents "you won't believe what's happened".

I don't remember much more after that apart from putting a tape in that I lost years ago - it was certainly very surreal television.

It would be nice if those MHPers who provided the clips would re-encode them for the Meldrum page - especially the interruptions to the film.

I bet ITN were fuming at the thought of having to hand over control to GMTV that morning!

I'm surprised they get Fiona to do the GMTV coverage! Was Jon Stapleton around then?

There was audio somewhere on a radio site some where, which i think you may have already come across.

If anyone has the memorable moment ITN had to hand over to GMTV, I'd love to hear it.

Moyles I believe was given plaudits for handling the situation quite sensitively at the time, on the phone to people over in America (I think he even had an interview with Jerry Springer at one point about the reaction there). There is a 'September 11 - before and after' on chrismoyles.net, but I don't think it covers the exact moments, instead focussing on their decision to continue a show as normal that weekend so they could enjoy their final weekend show.

No he wasn't, he was still doing The Time The Place until it's cancellation in 1998, after that he joined GMTV. I think in 1997 GMTV didn't have many credible journalistic presenters back then, so dragging Fiona Philips in on a Sunday was probably the best they could do.

I don't know if it's still on YouTube but someone posted about 15 minutes worth of GMTV from that day and it proved interesting viewing. To describe it best IMO it is what GMTV would have done in terms of Live OB's and people's thoughs, but probably wouldn't do now.

I was working a night shift that night in a shop. I used to take a walkman in and listen to the radio while stocking the shelves etc. Think I listened to Talk Radio most of the night with Mike Dickin presenting. The announcement sent a shiver up my spine, despite the fact that it was fairly obvious by then what had happened. The problem was that a few seconds after hearing the announcement I had to serve a customer

A few stations were caught out by it, IRN extended their bulletins to 3 minutes. Therefore my local station, which was on automation overnight, ballsed up all the news by cutting off to a jingle after 2 minutes.

Yes, they strated by running ambient sounds such as the sea for their test transmissions, by the day before launch they were playing music but went back to the sound effects. The launch was very low key and Gary Crowley who launched the station dedicated the launch to Diana's memory

The big test of that day radio-wise was Simon Mayo who had only recently joined 5 Live and had (and still does have) the afternoon slot. It was a bit of a baptism of fire (in fact quite literally!)

First announcement

Unofficial announcement of death

Official Announcement