London Bridge Is Down

Would they have done an Obit rehearsal from Salford? Would they need to as World are on air from Studio C and the Obit announcement would be a simulcast.

The only way I could see Breakfast handling this would be if it was a Diana style scenario where there is some kind of incident being reported as news which develops into an Obit.

Might it not be the case that they will get embargoed notification, to enable everyone to get big names in place and packages lined up. You really wouldn’t want to mess it up.

Would we really have such a major announcement delivered to the nation by Roger Johnson or Sally Nugent. Over on ITV it’d be Faye Barker or Suzanne Virdee

With the Queen Mother coverage, what was Peter Sissons doing in on a Saturday, was he the duty newscaster that day or drafted in as a big name?

Not sure if you guys have seen this article from The Guardian.

Quite a long read but covers how the news would be broken.

As you say, if the news breaks during Breakfast, Breakfast will cover it, as they do with breaking news on a regular basis. On HIGNFY a while back Steph said she'd done rehearsals for it. Other than coming from Salford it's no different to any other programme on the news channel.



He was on duty that day, this being the era when the main presenters did the news seven days a week - as he says, he got half an hour's notice of the news.

I think it's nice how they used the 'Sombre Bounce' ident to follow on from it. I guess anything else (except maybe 'Invisible Walls') would have seemed inappropriate.

Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but why the need to run the two-minutes silence within CBeebies continuity at all, given that the following film is introduced by a BBC Two ident/continuity announcer? They could have run the silence over a BBC Two slide or joined up with News 24 to take the silence. Or was running a child-friendly silence just considered a 'good thing to do'?

Coins in general stay in legal tender until removed from circulation rg replaced with a new size etc. I remember being handed shilling coin with a 5p in the early 90s and it had George V on it- it was still accepted. My mum remembers not long before decimal day in 1971? being given Queen Victoria pennies in change

I suppose so, if it was in a regular slot for children's programmes then it's better to do one that's includes the explanation of why it's happening. I suspect it would have been going out on the Cbeebies channel too?

Of course both children's channels do observe the 2 minute silence(s) in November

Yes both CBBC and CBeebies channels carried the montage of children meeting the QM - quite a nice way of doing it I thought

I’ve got an pennies that my father gave to me in 1970ish after receiving them that year as change from 1867, 1889, and 1901, all with Queen Victoria’s head on them. The 67 and 89 coins are very worn, but the 1901 one must have spent 70 years down the back of a sofa !

He mentions in his autobiography he'd done lunchtime and teatime bulletin that day. I think at this time, it was mainly the Friday newsreaders such as George Alagiah and Fiona Bruce at the time, who presented at the weekend, and Sissons still did most late weekend bulletins. Pretty sure I've read somewhere that Michael Buerk had stopped doing weekends c. 2000, so he'd often do more in midweek, leaving Sissons to do weekend lates. Fiona Bruce presented the Sunday bulletin, which would back up my theory, but of course with it being a Bank Holiday weekend anyway, it could all have been different.




Would have to have been Sombre Bounce. Invisible Walls didn't debut until later in 2002.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/16/what-happens-when-queen-elizabeth-dies-london-bridge
This has some media information.