Royal News Coverage

With regards to the Today interview, I don't think it's necessarily that presenters aren't experts or passionate about the royal family; after all, Julie Etchingham, Philip Schofield et al. would have had to perform strenuous research in order to provide comprehensive coverage and they have been perceived to have done quite well.

You do get the point of an 'international news station' don't you? They broadcast to every country and the proportion of those who are interested in an anniversary taking place in the UK are very small

The critic on Radio 4 made a good point when she said that too often these days commentators and presenters spend too much time describing what the viewer can see; they almost forget that they are broadcasting to a TV audience rather than radio. For TV, the presenters should be informing viewers with information they can't get from the pictures.

That what worries me about Huw Edwards and the Olympics - in Beijing and Delhi he just didn't allow the pictures to tell the story. However dare to question their choice of lead commentator and the BBC just tell you it's a news event so he's doing it despite the numerous complaints about his previous efforts and rather than try and make the flagship BBC1 airing the best it can be they tell us to p*** off to watch the red button no commentary option if we don't want to be inflicted by Huw.

indeed - N6 picked up a clean feed of BBC One on this occasion.

Typical BBC reaction to criticism there. Ignore most of the points that everyone agrees on and bury your head in the sand. Loved the last few seconds - the critic said (rightly) that too many of the presenters during the river pageant coverage were inexperienced and had not enough background knowledge, to which Mark Damazer replied that most of the presenters were knowledgeable and notably failed to mention the likes of Fearne Cotton, Chris Hollins and others who were inappropriate for the occasion.

He says the BBC tried to 'jazz it up' and be 'inclusive' - I don't necessarily have a problem with that. However, couldn't they have jazzed it up by including even more impressive camera work, actually being there for the key moments, and informing viewers with interesting trivia and anecdotes about the vessels and people sailing them? I think that would have gone down with most of the viewers - I can't see many of the young people who they were obviously trying to impress sitting down to watch a 4-hour pageant of old boats on a Sunday afternoon. Most of the audience were probably older and young folk like me who are actually interested in the monarchy and with a bit of a quirky interest in history etc.

The BBC seemed to treat the pageant as a backdrop for its celebrity-driven features, which was to misjudge what I suspect most of the viewers wanted - some good shots of the river with informed discussion. The critic on Radio 4 made a good point when she said that too often these days commentators and presenters spend too much time describing what the viewer can see; they almost forget that they are broadcasting to a TV audience rather than radio. For TV, the presenters should be informing viewers with information they can't get from the pictures.

Totally agree...

One feels that the BBC are missing some very key people that have moved on... and not sure events like this should be covered by BBC Entertainment.

My biggest problem, though, is an email sent today to all staff by the DG, which just shoves all the problems under a huge carpet and fails to mention anything about the viewer/press complaints and talks about how amazing it all was... not one mention of anything negative - not even a line - staggering!

That's the problem with the corporation at the moment. People will not admit that - despite trying something new - it got it wrong.

No it didn't - it ran its own version from server...

There are reports that an overseas broadcaster may have broken the embargo and run the message before 6pm. Not sure who but something was posted on a social networking site about it apparently. Major inquiry now under way.

I really do think if the whole weekend had been a BBC News production, it would have been a heck of a lot better. All it needed was more credible people (especially some with a journalistic background) and let's face it, you can't get a more credible organisation than BBC News.