Flash flooding in Cornwall

Not as pathetic as Westcountry Television - total airtime given to the story was 3 minutes, no updates through the evening even though they are alledgedly our regional TV company, no acknowledgment of it on the recorded weather forecast.

Spotlight on the other hand hasn't spoken about anything else since it started, have allready had David Braine talking about the weather angle on it, aswell as giving advice about updates on Radio Cornwall.

Spotlight now showing viewers footage e-mailed to them.

Spotlight also pledging to keep making updates throughout the programme, and have now 'moved on to today's other news' - said in such a tone that they are clearly acknowledging that it pails in comparison.

ITV News have just mentioned it and replayed that awful media player clip!

Im just flicking between Sky News and BBC News 24 and BBC is vastly superior ! A great aerial shot whereas SKy are currently showing emailed photos!

I wonder if ITV News will make an effort at 7pm or just totally ignore the story?

I expect they will make an effort - they were doing quite well up to 6.30 - just as many phone interviews as Sky.

So where have these helicopter shots come from? Are they BBC camermen or from the RAF? Is there away that Sky can 'buy' the pictures from the BBC, or will they wait for their own resources?

How long would it take the SkyCopter to get from London to North Cornwall? I just get the feeling it wont even be sent.

Well listening to the viewer speaking to BBC News 24 she said she could see FIVE helicopters in the sky. I could identify two as yellow RAF helicopters but I wonder what the other helicopters were?

Spotlight now have their top reporter in Boscastle, although no picture feed yet.

This story is going to be very big. Boscastle is described as totally devistated.

EDIT: Make that TWO reporters from Spotlight.

ITV News made it their second story in the headline recap.

And they tried unsuccessfully to talk to the person who sent the video.

7 helicopters on scene, all from official authorities. No news helicopters.

Spotlight reporting buildings are starting to collapse.

ITV News on ITV1 have returned to the story where Nic Owen said, "this is the latest situation" repeating the media clips again! A phone caller failed and Nic filled until the important John Prescott story!

Spotlight has spent all but about 5 minutes of their programme on it so far, making Westcountry's feeble efforts look even more of a shambles.

This to me highlights the reason why ITV's nationalisation is wrong - the token shells left of what were once regional television companies are completely incapable of dealing with anything that can't be carefully planned in advance. Even their Weather forecast was the usual pre-recorded one which didn't even ackowledge the incident. 12 years ago, TSW would have been ditching the network schedule in order to cover this story, with updates made in between programmes (or even in the continuity announcements to programmes). Westcountry on the other hand will receive no extra updates because ITV1 towers in London don't see the importance, and when it did have the opportunity of half an hour's airtime, they instead were running pointless carefully planned lives to Athens just because someone won a medal who once lived in Ivybridge and giving a genuinely relevant and important regional story next to no coverage because it happened to quickly for them to respond. It's beyond a joke that people claim modern 'ITV1' is better than ITV of the past, it really is.