Newsrooms at the Weekend

Bear with me on this one, though it isn't TV focused, but I couldn't think of a better place to put it.

Now basically I'm going to set the scene here, there has been a very serious fire at Distillery not too far from my house which has created several minor explosions thanks to Gas Cylinders and the mix of alcohol. Plus it doesn't help that the asbestos filled roof of the building collapsed. This overall has meant many roads leading people in and out of Warrington being closed, with masses of people who have had to be evacuated from Homes, Pubs and Morrisons Supermarket. (Forgive me for sounding like J.Christie )

So when there is a story of this nature, it is usually covered on Local News, but this has only developed after teatime, after both BBC and ITV have shown their News bulletins.

Now I've been checking all night to seen what has been going on, there has been nothing from BBC News (on Ceefax and on Manchester or Merseyside bits within bbc.co.uk) , a page dedicated to it on ITV Teletext and it being the top story on BBC GMR.

Now here's my question: What is the policy on the BBC Newsroom's at weekends and evenings, is there no-one there? Do they all go home? Has GMR had to rely on official statements from the Emergency services or phone calls from the general public.

Plus one more thing, I put on the Radio and tuned to 107.2 Wire FM which I duly notice is now part of The UTV Group, on their 9pm News there was nothing about this story, I presume this was a bulletin taken off a Nationwide feed for whoever supplies the News to these stations, but I was just thinking couldn't they have done their own bulletin? I presume this is the policy on weekday daytimes where they have their own Newsreader, reports and reports from the supplier.

I don't know about BBC GMR but my BBC local radio station doesn't have any news bulletins after 1pm at weekends so if anything happens it'll be sunday morning before it was reported

WOW!

BBC Radio Ulster has hourly bulletins 7 days a week from 7pm to midnight. I thought most local stations had at least a better news service than yours Andrew!

As for you nwtv, I think the local journos must have just gone home early on Saturday night! That'll teach them huh?

I thought the bulletins resumed after the sport?

On radio I pretty sure all ILR stations wrap up by lunchtime or mid afternoon at the latest and then rely on a national news service provider.
I thought the BBC operated a regional newsroom until midnight.

On TV, BBC NW and Granada operate until around 1830, shortly after their last bulletin of the day.

However all GOOD newsrooms normally have a call out procedure.

I've yet to see pictures on the BBC but the ITV NC is running pictures and vox pops of the Warrington incident which must have come from Granada. I'll watch their bulletins today to check.

GMR had this fire at the top of their bulletins from 1800 - 2200 last night, with audio of a nearby resident. I know because I looked at their scripts when I came to write a couple of lines about it for Five Live.

Though if there was something this big happening in your patch, I'd expect someone from the ILR news team to come in and report it. Depends how good and committed your news ed / news team is though.

True, I caught the GMR bulletins at 9pm and 10pm, but they were both described as 'BBC News for the North West', so whether this also went out on Radio Merseyside and Radio Lancashire is beyond me.

It's bound to be mentioned on Granada, but I'll keep ITV News on for now if they're taking stuff of Granada.

(Non TV Mode now) It was very odd today, the roads remain closed, but the Morrisons (where I work at) was opened and we had very few customers all day, no delieveries or anything, but traffic wise it is very bad as a crucial part of the A49 is shut and it appears it will for some time.

Maybe they do, according to the website the last one is at 1pm though, but they may have got it wrong

I've never heard another bulletin after 1pm - goes straight into another show at 6 on Radio Leeds.

I used to have a friend who worked for one of the ILR stations in Devon (Pirate FM), and he only used to read local bulletins until about 5pm at weekends (6.30pm on weekdays), and then they took the feed direct from IRN.

However, I think it very much depends on the enthusiasm of the individuals working at the station. I remember him walking round Torquay one day when he was off work when he came across a large fire (at a hotel I think) and stopped to get information from people so that he could phone in a report to work.

Obviously either nobody was aware of the incident in the North West or they couldn't be bothered to go out and file a story on it.

Most small radio stations have a skeleton staff on the weekend and I would imagine that at 9pm on a Saturday night the output would be automated. I doubt if anyone at the local Warrington station was even aware of the fire - they'll have all been out on the lash! Warrington is on the edge of BBC GMR and Radio Merseyside's transmission area and they don't have many listeners there.

It would have to be a really major story for telly to devote enough resources to it to have an extra local news bulletin, and they'd probably need special permission from the network. But local telly wil have sent a crew to get pictures for the next day, which Granada did as they had an excellent package from Rachel Gwilliam today, with bangs going off in the background!

And spectacular as it was, nobody died, and that often influences the amount of coverage a story is given.

Because we can now access news 24 hours a day we expect to be able to find out what's going on in the world instantly. But there are limitations and news organisations direct their precious resources to the time when most news happens - during the week.