Sky News

There's absolutely no way that Dermot is on a seven figure annual salary. Having said that if you think that huge presenter salaries don't mean that budgets are often cut or restricted in other areas because of that then you are very much mistaken. It happens - in many genres, not just news.

Re: Heathrow Incident.

Hmmm... Sky News the first for breaking news? Maybe. But BBC News 24 have had live pictures of the scene for more than 10 minutes now...

They must be kicking themselves at Sky Towers - can't they see Heathrow from their back garden?

Very embarassing for Sky if the BBC got the pictures first- the BBC have their helicopter up.

There's very little advantage is running out of Osterley rather than Central London, but surely covering heathrow has to be one of them.

It appears from watching both channels that the SkyCopter is having to hold a distant position, presumably to not interfere with the airspace of the BBC helicopter, which appears to have much closer and more detailed pictures.

The BBC footage seems to now be recorded, as the Live bug has disappeared.

It says BBC News Exclusive too.. but whats that got to do with Sky?!

The BBC's copter was only live for about 10-15 minutes. You could see the underneath of the BBC copter whilst it was flying away from the scene. So, it was probably told to get away from Heathrow's airspace.

Since then N24 has been showing the recorded footage.

N24 are claiming it an exclusive 'cause they know that neither Sky or ITN are allowed as close as the BBC got.

Might this have been a case of good luck - i.e. the BBC helicopter was pretty near at the time, and diverted to get pictures?

Credit to them, they're good pictures. Sky seem to have tried to make up for this by getting every single live vantage point of Heathrow possible, whereas now the BBC are using their (still better) recorded stuff.

I was adding info to the poster above me

I think it shows the naivety of Sky News to purchase a specific "SkyCopter". I imagine it was based somewhere in the London area, but it is a single chopper that has to be deployed.

As I understand it, the BBC hire out a certain number of flying hours per year from a specialist company which would have several choppers. This allows them to deploy the nearest chopper that's ready to fly.

This seems to have been the difference today where the BBC chopper managed to get permission to get into the Heathrow airspace when it was temporarily suspended for commercial planes. By the time the SkyCopter was in the air, air traffic control were already looking to reopen the North runway and so don't want unnecessary traffic in the air. Sky were simply too late.

This is from nearly 7 years ago - with the tight single headed shots which Sky News are using all the time now it all looks very similiar on-screen, with the exception of the newswall of course.

Also - other than the rounded edges, the graphics aint changed that much have they ? (certainly not 7 years worth of "evolution" or "progression" !)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8-GluzkOQU

Moving away from this story, I do think it's alarming how tabloid the Sky News website has become (I looked at it for the first time in ages for the heathrow story).

Take a look at the headline straps used on the BBC News and Sky News websites for the revelation that the man accused of killing 5 prostitutes in Suffolk had had sex with 4 of them.

BBC News: "Accused had sex with four victims"

Sky News: "Ipswich 'Killer' Had Sex With Victims"

Forgive me for being old-fashioned but does anyone really believe that you can say anything (including prejudicing a jury trial) by using apostrophes around the controversial parts?!!