Nelson Mandela aged 95 has died

Comparing the British Coverage with France or Germany, isn't really comparing equals. South Africa in a member of The Commonwealth and was for a period of time a British Colony. The history of UK-SA relations is an order of magnitude greater than any other equivalent European - SA relationship. SA is also part of the English Speaking world too.

Yes, perhaps the safest thing to say is the UK (and The Netherlands) certainly shaped the country's history over the last 150 years !

I would give about 10 minutes of Mandela every TOTH and half past after BBC News at 10 and through overnight until Breakfast, then would split World and News 24 so N24 could cover rolling domestic news including northern storm. I wonder how Al Jazeera (master of compact but comprehensive coverage) would deal with it along with rest of the day's news.

Yes and with the hindsight of what we know now compared with what they knew at the time. It's hard to remember now that at that moment it was just an accident. The idea it was deliberate or that there would be two wasn't even in our minds

The thing that threw them I think was that the live shot of the second plane hitting wasn't actually that obvious and mostly behind the aston. Blink and you miss it stuff. Combine that with them going to the correspondent and all the other chaos that was happening it's not surprising that they missed it. Then were confronted by 2 towers on fire and trying to work out how that happened. That was only confirmed by the 'new footage' which of course they had the luxury of being able to check.

I have seen at least one clip of that incident where a presenter thought that the second plane was actually a replay of the first, despite the fact that there's already smoke. Confusing times

Nothing wrong with that clip at all in the context of the time... except the spelling of Center but that's forgivable!

In case anyone's interested, here's how BBC Three broke the news:


There was also a strap at the start of Him & Her:

These sorts of things make me wish the BBC News channel wasn't tied in with BBC One's bulletins. Any self respecting broadcaster would've started with a presenter at a desk announcing the news. The way the BBC like to untidily drop into the BBC News channel like it did when Prince George left the hospital is, in my opinion, unprofessional.

That also, some might say, is another example of BBC arrogance. People sometimes watch TV for escapism,
TV is so much more than a source of instant news, they may not actually want to know what's going on outside of their living room for the duration of a programme, and would like to watch it without distraction from beginning to end ?

I'm not aware of any cinemas on Thursday night, putting up captions etc or stopping their films, and I doubt that
will happen when we have the next royal death, (and quite right too)

There was no reason why that couldn't have been done. News Channel was simulcasting World, so route Studio C directly to air on the NC. BBC1 Pres takes a Studio A feed where Martine Croxall introduces the press conference, in or out of vision. Then at 10, all three feeds go to Studio E for the Ten.

We all know why BBC shot gun bulletins, to save money

How many cinemas do you know with their own news services?

They do have the ability to address the audience through the audio system, and now of course
nearly all cinemas are 'digital' they do have the means to knock up simple captions, I know the font would distrees some in here , but it would do the job if required

Most cinemas have the ability to pick up satellite feeds to at least some of their screens, there's no reason why they couldn't show a news channel. I doubt they would interrupt a film for anything other than something that had an immediate effect on those watching because if its locality, and they'd probably do it by stopping the film and sending a member of staff in to announce it from in front of a blank screen. Anything else, it's not going to make much difference for people to find out when they turn their phones on as they leave (or dare I say it during the film ).