Papal resignation & conclave coverage

I completely agree. He's already announced his retirement, and not much else is happening at the moment, and the staff who are based there permanently are perfectly capable of covering any developments.

I wouldn't be surprised if this is covered in Friday's newswatch, with the usual complaints about licence fee payers' money being wasted on sending presenters out there unnecessarily.

In my view it's Justified for a day or two, it's an unprecidented matter, affecting many worldwide.

Of course it will, the old bores will need a change from the usual nonsense complaints about women's knees being visible on Breakfast and presenters standing up

Or people missing the point entirely, Cando.

Considering how far this has dropped down the new agenda (rather unsurprisingly) today it seems even more foolish that presenters were sent out there.

Huw was sent there for yesterday evening's programme and is off today.

Pretty wasteful gesturing, if you ask me.

NewsWatch will be covering exactly this (Huw named and shamed by the trail) at 19:45 on the BBC News Channel tonight.

Surprise, surprise!

A word for the wonderful visuals provided by CTV Vatican City of the events in The Vatican and at Castel Gandolfo today for the Pope's departure. Added to the sense of occasion well. Only a couple of breakups in the Helicopter shots of the 20min trip including flying over Ciampino Airport at 6pm without radar interference too.

The Vatican Player has the two sequences in full if you want to view.

It was interesting that despite the initial rush to book flights on the day he resigned that on his last day of Pope it was a fair way down the pecking order.

Considerable technical briefing on CTV now detailing the availabilty and otherwise of material from the assembly of, during, and post conclave. emphasising details with regards to smoke.

If there is an election on the first or third daily ballot ANY smoke shown will be WHITE and an election will have been completed. Vatican ensuring that all are aware that the used ballots on those ballots if no election is made are combined with those of the second (or fourth) ballot and burned together.

The conclave starts tomorrow.

The conclave has begun, once again some spectacular pictures from Vatican TV, especially as the doors to the Sistine Chapel closed.

Sky are using the HD side panel to show a live picture of the chimney. Weirdly, although CNN International haven't got anything like that during programmes, commercial breaks are now in a quarter-screen with pictures from the Vatican on the other side of the screen.