Security alert on oil rig

News 24 leading the way with coverage of this. A north sea oil rig is being evacuated, 539 people on board.

Apparently the government in London has been notified and the alert has been sparked by 'a woman on the rig'.

They tried to get more information but the squadron leader in charge of the evacuation was being very cagey.

Best Sky News could do, breaking the story 10 minutes later, was saying there was an incident somewhere in the north sea.

STV news at 12.55pm will be interesting - personally (although I know it wont happen) I would unite the two areas and take the broadcast for central from the Grampian region. I'm normally the first to complain when stories from the north appear on Scotland Today but this is clearly important. At the very least it is very rare.

EDIT: Sky catching up, albeit they appear to be basing a lot of their information from the BBC interview. Bomb disposal on the way.

Bugger. We spend the last 15 hours saying TV companies only cover stories because they're in Central London - and then something breaks probably as far away in Britain you can get from the capital in the middle of the ocean.


"Woman on rig" though - surely a bit of an overreaction! Not all women are evil - apparently!

Thing is that Sky were caught napping with this one. They may have had fantastic coverage of a relatively unimportant fire in London, but when something massive like this happens they've got a major disadvantage to the BBC.

BBC1 Scotland has stuck with its tedious regional politics slot for reasons that no-one quite understands. Quick update at the end though.

ITV looks even dafter than usual: "We'll bring you the latest on this breaking story in our evening bulletin". Reminds me of Kent Brockman's outcue on The Simpsons: "We'll have more on this later after the film, or you can turn to another channel. *pause* Sorry, DO NOT turn to another channel".

STV taking what looked like a recorded report from the newsroom, presumably recorded for both regions, then going into their normal bulletin. Would have been better uniting the stations.

Northsound radio in Aberdeen going to a special bulletin at 1.30pm.

There is nothing to say though. They've been evacuated - so until either a bomb goes off or it's established who made the threat, there is absolutely nothing to report.


And with it being in the middle of the North Sea, there can hardly be live coverage of events too - which once everyone was off the rig would just be a camera waiting for an explosion which almost certainly is never going to happen.


It's a headline, not a rolling news story.

More interesting than a pub fire though...

I expect the pictures of the market fire were a lot better than those of the oil rig