Michael Jackson 1958-2009

Bloody idiots. Why end the programme 'early' to show a filler programme? If people have been watching since 6pm, I'm sure they would prefer to see it to the end.

I'm glad it's BBC Two, if it was BBC One we'd probably get 15 minutes of trailers.

Actually they left at the conclusion of the service so unless viewers would have preferred to have seen 15 minutes of emptying stadium, Coast will have to suffice.

No they didn't. From what I saw, they ended with their own montage of clips while the coffin was being carried out and ended the show before the last speech/prayer from the same guy who opened the show. I watched the end on E! and they left the AEG feed at 8:48. At this point Coast was already on BBC Two.

Good effort from BBC2 tonight - so nice to be able to watch it without any on screen junk, and although at times it irritated me slightly, I appreciated the more informed commentary.

Sky News was dreadful - to have the ticker constantly promoting Sky Arts HD wasn't appropriate at all. If it had been used as it should to present the other headlines, especially as Sky News are away from real news for three hours, fair enough - but this was basically a three hour promotion for Sky HD.

Did Sky Arts do their own thing, or simulcast Sky News?

Problem they have is that all they have is the pool feed and two out of vision commentators, and quite possibly no idea when that pool feed is going to finish - it very much seems that they have been playing a guessing game all evening with little idea what was happenning when.

And Nelson and Gambo did so much filling earlier during the unexpected silence, they probably had little else to say in conclusion. I presume they were in a studio at TV Centre, but given the urgency of mounting this programme they hadn't got a set in there so couldn't easily go in vision?

Had fears that the event would be heavily laden with the evangelical preaching of Sharpton and ML King III but it wasn't for such a religious country. On the whole a worthy tribute with some standouts from Hudson and Shaheen Jafargholi.

Another gem from Kay

"and Paris spoke of her love for her Mother"

The BBC Two coverage was ruined by unecessary, banal commentary.

I'm sure the audience in the arena wouldn't have been pleased if they had someone whispering the blatantly obvious into their ears every 3 minutes.

Thankfully Sky News showed the memorial service as it was meant to be seen and let the pictures speak for themselves. So well done to them.

I watched CNN's coverage, it was a good enough picture, no interrupting commentary, plus they just kept the black "CNN LIVE" dog on - they removed the flipper.

Good analysis afterwards from non other than Larry King!

I think it's different with it being shown on BBC2 though. It's the era of TV we're living in now unfortunately where banal information has to be told to the viewer regardless of it happening or not. That said, yeah it would have been nice to be played out straight from stream.

Indeed - complete with the distinctly annoying yellow ticker which rolled with nothing but the same promo for a good three hours.

If they really wanted to promote the HD coverage, surely they could have replaced the ticker with a static white-on-black strap or something of the like.