Storm Christophe

We were speculating about what would happen if a COVID briefing clashed with the inauguration but it was a natural event which ended up getting a rolling news blackout as events took place in Washington.

It's headline news this morning, especially now the media know the vaccine factory is at risk of flooding, but now the cuts to BBC News means at 10am once again the inauguration takes priority.

Did the floods get more of a look in on BBC Breakfast given that areas close to Salford were badly affected?

Because BBC World's agenda takes priority over BBC News Channel's?

<cynical mode> BBC World earns money, whilst BBC News Channel costs money? 🤔

Those directly affected by Storm Christoph had BBC local radio giving updates, with BBC Radio Manchester staying on-air overnight.

Is it too much to expect a news channel to cover news? The inauguration was pretty much done, a bit more of a balanced agenda rather than giving the impression there was only one story in town might have been more fitting.

One of the things I found odd about this was how it was promoted - see the promotional graphic in this Radio Today article.

It just says "Listen on Sounds". If your power is out because of a flood, your wi-fi is down, your local mobile network is either down or overloaded, is that really the best way to listen? I know promoting Sounds and barely acknowledging other platforms is a BBC priority at present, but wouldn't it have been better for them to promote the local FM frequencies for this emergency public safety broadcast?

I believe it’s snowing down south today, so it’ll be interesting to see how much coverage it gets on the news, to see if that north/south news divide still exists.

Most we got when it snowed up north 2 weeks ago was a quick 5 second read over some pictures, about 20 mins into the bulletin, so it’ll be interesting to see.

It is, for the first time here since Feb 1st 2019. It's the also the first time I've not been worried about getting snowed in, and not being able to go anywhere very much in the car !