Nelson Mandela aged 95 has died

You would say that of course

The liveness or not of Obama's statement is irrelevant really, it will be repeated many times in the next few hours so how it was done originally doesn't matter

Jon Sopel on BBC World News, he seemed to get in about an hour after the news was announced - was he coincidently in the newsroom? Or called in? Would've been a quick call in supposingly!

Point taken on the weather, but I think I should point out there that the weather was not the only big story today that got dropped from the BBC News at Ten, so did the Channellor's Autumn Statement, and that is at least as important. In fact, there was no coverage of any other story on the BBC News at Ten, though the Autumn Statement did get reported on Spotlight in my area.

On the second point, you are missing one key point here. The news broke less than half an hour before the Ten went to air. When Margaret Thatcher died, the One went into breaking news mode, when Nigel Lawson resigned as Chancellor back in 1989, the Six went into Breaking News mode. It's happened time and again throughout the history of BBC News, stories breaking just before the next scheduled BBC1 bulletin, that bulletin goes into breaking news mode, so it's not unexpected that they dropped everything else for Mandela.

What does this even mean? Please use more than 160 characters when necessary. I don't know why I am bothering anyway, judging by the way you are repeating things already posted by others, you clearly aren't reading this thread.

I thought moon had been pulled to be used in these occasions.

Flicking around the news channels, RT don't seem to have mentioned Mandela yet except on the ticker

Here's the moment BBC One opted out of Mrs Brown's boys for those asking:



And here's how it looked on the BBC News channel.

Coverage from SABC is being streamed onto YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Hea8l3u3X0

And especially when BBC Two and BBC News Channel had their own coverage at the time BBC One broke away for the nations&regions.

And that's the beauty of the current system: BBC News Channel can cater for uninterrupted coverage of big international events with BBC World News.

BBC One can join in for the biggest international news events, but can opt away to cover any major stories directly affecting people's livelihoods in this country thanks to its regional network, safely in the knowledge that other BBC outlets are providing continuing coverage of the international story.

I really disagree about BBC One being a solely national channel and for it to neglect a major news story on its home turf. Since BBC Two lost its ability to show regional news in England, BBC One's ability to go down to a regional level to cover big regional stories at a time when ITV has got less regional is a real asset, one which it is actively cultivating: The channel has even had regional suffixes added to its label on Freeview last week and they're going to be rolling out English Regions in HD (subject to Trust approval). For it to have neglected that asset at a time when demand for regional news in the East of England and in Scotland was high would have been a travesty. It's nice that the perceived 'London and the South' view of the news agenda didn't dominate tonight.

Thanks for that. Very poor indeed.

Newsnight don't appear too keen to wrap it up.

Mandela coverage continues over on S4C, too. They had a black/white S4C ident introducing the current documentary, which followed an extra bulletin of Newyddion. The now/next schedule on the Freesat EPG is missing at the moment, so not sure how their schedule is going to pan out...