Presidential Inauguration Coverage.

Mark has been filing reports for the last couple of days but sending Julie over there to join him, presumably just for this one bulletin, did seem a bit pointless.
Personally I would have preferred to have one presenter remain in London, providing fuller coverage of the day's other events as per the Evening News, but I would guess this was a reaction to the fact that other channels have been able to provide more extensive coverage of the inauguration earlier in the day.

Still going out online

And now back to the way it was on TV - must have been a temporary loss.

Yea, it really makes hell of a difference.

There was a rumour that Julie had paid her own air fare so she could present the election coverage in November. If that rumour had some truth to it, I wouldn't be surprised if she was keen to be out there for today as well?

Absolutely agree. Mark Austin usually comes to life when anchoring on location, but it felt tonight like his limelight had been stolen in having to share every sentence with Julie. She'd have been better off in the studio offering further analysis and the other news.

In addition, tonight's programme really should have been extended - they may justify not covering it live on both cost and the fact they get thrashed by the BBC however better their own coverage is, but they could at least have added 10 minutes or so to News at Ten.


I'm not sure Newsnight really warrants being fronted from the Washington studio either.

Thanks to Huw and Matt for constantly interupting the ceremony to remind us of what a momentous occasion it was. I would never have guessed just by looking at the pictures and listening to the music and speeches

CNN's coverage has been excellent, so that was my channel of choice for the long day - superbly anchored by Wolf Blitzer, although the bottom graphic was a little annoying, glad to see it was dropped during "the moment".

They also broke the Ted Kennedy news from the scene a mere six minutes after paramedics were called. MSNBC were the only channel I saw with shots of the ambulance.

Agreed with the comments on Sky News with JT being great as usual from what I saw. Excellent HD streaming as well - goes to show the pointlessness of some of the graphics Sky News called on during the day. Bit miffed that I could only get up to 1mb/sec though *shakes fist at ISP*

Matt Frei absolutely ruined it for me... stuck with Sky's coverage which was far more superior.

His voice isn't a particularly easy one to listen to, with it being fairly camp and posh, but for what I was watching the show for, which was mainly the speech, their coverage was sufficient. I didn't see Sky's so I can't compare.

The quality of Sky's pictures was fantastic. Wish I had known about the HD stream during the day or I would have chosen that over the BBC's.

It was terrible the amount of graphics Sky News SD had. I watched them up until Biden was sworn in and had to change to BBC One minutes later.

The BBC HD coverage looked great (the US multilateral pool was HD, the BBC unilaterals were SD upconverts) - I'm sure it was better than the Sky HD internet stream.