Diana death coverage

Firstly apologies for starting yet another “Diana” thread, but as we’ve been approaching the anniversary a thought has been going through my head.

Perhaps those who were working at the Beeb at the time or indeed watching the events unfold through the night can answer this?

We all know how BBC1, ITV, C4, C5 etc covered the events, but I’ve been wondering about BBC2. Yes, they showed exactly the same as BBC1 for much of the Sunday, but MHP’s Diana coverage page states that BBC2 closed down at the scheduled time that night.

It would be interesting to know who made the decision to recall BBC2 from closedown, exactly when this occurred and how was it handled on air considering the BBC2 transmitters would have been turned off for the night as this was in the days before 24 hour TV.

Appreciate it’s been 22 years but would be interesting to hear from anyone with any recollection of this.

We did have this thread from 2 years ago, if that is of any help. https://tvforum.uk/tvhome/20-years-death-princess-diana-42903/

I think I mentioned somewhere in that thread that, according to someone who was on shift that night, once the decision was made to simulcast on BBC Two it did take a while to happen because people had to be contacted to power the transmitters back up, which wasn't a quick process. No idea how it was introduced on air, though.

As an aside, something I learned recently-ish was that the Nine O'Clock News background wasn't used that morning because of its suitably dark and sombre look as I'd assumed but for the much more straightforward reason that they were going to air before any of the scene shifters were in to change the back panels from the night before.

I'd always assumed that CAR just plugged NC1 output into the Net2 distribution and the transmitters would come up over a period of time? Nobody would expect it to be there so no need for an announcement.

I do wonder what the rationale for the simulcast was, what purpose it served rather than coming on air at the scheduled time.

Why would they need to do that? Presumably there would have been someone in the transmission area looking after NC1, easier just to pop into the next room, cut up the BBC1 suite on the output of BBC2s and then go through whatever procedure they did in the morning... if there was such a thing then (I suspect if the transmitters did need to be switched on by then it would have been a fairly simple thing)

Easier to get out of the simulcast into other programmes that way too

My assumption was that leaving a live transmission area unattended was not the done thing?

I'm not sure that's a rule, when News 24 came along a few months later NC1 was left with that gong through the mixer all night with a director in 2 doing learning zone


As I say there would have been someone there for BBC1. The suites were adjacent with an engineers booth between them and the area was secure. It's not a problem

They did use the Nine O'clock backdrop for the morning of the funeral though, so I assume that was planned.

AFAIK they were the only occasions that backdrop was used in the daytime.

Just had a good read through that thread, and one thing I'd probably add to what I posted two years ago is that I rather like the obit mode Astons the BBC used, which were on-brand for the style at the time but sufficiently different.

I saw some obit rehearsals in the latter days of TV Centre, and they just used the standard breaking news style captions, but white on black. I wonder what we'll see these days, given white on black is the norm.

Was the funeral coverage on all channels anchored from studios then? Hard to imagine nowadays something like that not being anchored on location.

No sorry I meant the news bulletins during the funeral coverage. IIRC David Dimbleby presented the BBC coverage with Martyn Lewis in the news studio with bulletins. I think the only other news story that day was Mother Theresa of Calcutta dying.