Breaking News Stories

I know think it's allowed that we discuss the treatment of the US attacks on America.

And all I can say is - yes - it is appropriate to have rolling coverage of something like that. But... is it necessary to have TWO BBC Channels (1 and News 24) devoted to it and simulcasting.

I don't see the point. Anyone who can get News 24 ALSO gets BBC One. Anyone who doesn't get News 24 won't miss it.

So why don't they....

Show uninterrupted coverage on BBC One, and continue to show rolling and varied new on News 24, reminding viewers that blanket coverage is available on the other side whenever they report the latest from the disaster - every 10 minutes or so.
As their adverts say, the news never stops - and that goes for major disasters too.

On the day of the US attacks, there were stories being covered on News 24 up until 2pm - they vanished, as did the weather forecasts and stock markets etc - why? when one story was being shown on one side couldn't they produce 2 different feeds?

Think about it from the BBC's point of view. One channel of theirs is showing it to the digital audience, why get another news team set up just for BBC ONE when they will cover the same story?

Indeed it is much easier for the BBC simply to switch BBC 1 over to News 24. Richard Sambrook who's head of BBC News has said that this was much easier to do than set up a whole other rolling news programme for the same story on BBC 1, as was the case when Diana died. This was also part of the reason why News 24 and BBC 1 merged their weekday Breakfast output this time last year. Reporters also find it easier to file just one report for one programme - its also easier for live link ups. In my opinion, they should also merge the 1, 6, and 10 o'clock news on BBC 1 with the News 24 bulletins. I know these are not meant to do breaking news stories, just a straight forward, traditional roundup, but if they did do this it would be good for News 24 viewers who for example would have a chance to catch up on the days 'other news' (as Huw and Anna and Michael/Peter would say) if they'd been watching long coverag of a single story.

Couldn't News 24 viewers just switch & change the channel to BBC 1 if they wanted the rest of the day's news.

BBC N24 viewers would indeed only have to change channel. Going back to the point in hand, it would not have mde sense for BBC and N24 to have had seperate outputs during that period. BBC wouldn't have the resources, ie reporters to have rolling news on both channels. It was a better decision to dedicate all news resources to the one breaking news story on the two channels. I was in Portugal at the time, and all 4 or so national broadcasters showed the same coverage, ie rebroadcasts from CNN and sky:news.

I'm not in the industry (yet!!!! teeheehee!) so I'm looking at this from the VIEWER's point of view only.

To ME, having (and paying for) two channels showing exactly the same programme is about as much use as a chocolate teapot. What if I wanted to see the sports results, or had been following the news stories on N24 that morning?

If I wanted to watch the breaking news, it was available by pressing '1' on my TV, but I wanted rolling news from the BBC, showing the stories they had previously been covering - nowhere could I find them.

BBC News manage to produce 2 news feeds at once (three if you count BBC World) whenever there's a bulletin on BBC One or Two, surely it can't be THAT hard to rig up the main news studio to go live for something like that?

And now the main points again....

2 Channels showing the same thing are useless
If you're going to take over BBC 1, show something else on News 24.
If it helps to put it this way, News 24 would not change its format, but BBC One would be showing a 'Special Programme'.

It just annoys me that there are no contingencies for this event

I'm sorry, I have to disagree here on this one. In the light of what happened, I don't think the Beeb had the time to organise another set of newsreaders for BBC1. Because the events were still evolving an hour after the first plane hit, it made good sense to switch to a service already covering it. It's also a good cost-cutting measure for the Beeb (which I am all for - I don't like paying the licence fee at the best of times!!!).

To be perfectly honest, if you wanted sports news or share prices, you could have switched to the ITN news channel. Even when things were 'happeneing', they still seemed to cover sports news and royal news (YUK). They were also the first to re-introduce adverts on their channel after what happened (I think it was the following day). Sky News was advert free for at least 5 days (costing them millions of pounds).

All I am saying is that there are more sources for sports news etc than just the news channels.


There we are....rant over

Simon

News stories of this calibre need instant coverage, and as licence payers why should the BBC waste money in covering the same events with different presenters, studios etc.

On the other hand, ITN produced outputs for ITV1, Ch4, Ch5 and the ITN News Channel. Surely this is a waste of resources, especially as the same live pictures were being used, but with the different channels showing them in different formats. However, was there really any real need for all these channels to show rolling news? Perhaps a caption saying that there was a major news story on ITV1 would have been better.

Whilst showing the same output over several channels may not give much choice for viewers, I would of thought that all other stories would pale into insignificance, especially in the first few hours after the story broke - especially as the enormity of teh attack became apparent.

Steve

Well I stand by my opinion that showing the same programme on 2 channels at once is stupid, News 24 should have continued and done its job as a rolling news service, obviously including coverage of the attacks IN its bulletins AND reminds viewrs that full live coverage was available on BBC One, but there WERE other stories.

To say they all pale into insignificance is all well and good, but maybe you would think differently if you had been living in Belfast and YOUR friends and children had been getting terrorised on the way to school, or if YOUR company had lost x number of points on the FTSE or whatever - it's trite, but life goes on, even when something like that is happening.

And if Sky News can effectively spend millions on the one story (by pulling all adverts for days on end, tho I dont know why) then surely the beeb can spend some money on public service commitments like providing the news to those who want it.