Obits during a major event

I think Diana got the level and nature of coverage because her death was unexpected. The story of the Queen Mum was basically "elderly lady dies of natural causes" so it is pretty standard, predictable coverage that is required.

The circumstances of Diana's death called for rolling coverage of a developing story, as the circumstances of the accident were reported, alongside the obit and tribute side of things.

Yes, it was one of the remembrance silences. The presenter who said it was former TSW announcer David Fitzgerald (who's now on BBC Radio Devon)

When the Queen dies it will have more of a knock-on effect on everything, even more so than when Diana died.
It will be a great step into the unknown as we haven't had a change of monarch since 1952 and the world has changed dramatically since then in how we deal with such things. Back then you went to church, prayed and listened to the news on the radio (and possibly crowded around somebody you knew had a television set). Today you scribble your feelings on Facebook and Twitter and try your best to argue everybody else's point of view down from yours.

That's not to mention all the other changes that happen - replacement money, replacement insignia, replacement of the appropriate lyrics in the national anthem... It will be one hell of a cultural shift/shock to eventually be carrying the face of Prince Charles around in your wallet.

Was it not reported previously that a lot of the plans for the Queen Mother's death were used for Diana?

I can foresee blanket coverage in the event of the Queen's death, but not in the same respect as Diana. Diana's death was more of a news story in the sense that it was unexpected and there were developments forthcoming for weeks (and if you're a Daily Express reader, decades) after.

There was a similar thing in place for when the royal baby was born, I think there was going to be no news after around 10:30pm until morning. Because of this the expectation was that it'd most likely be announced during Breakfast. Didn't end up happening in the end of course.



It was a 5:30pm kick-off. It's how I found out the Queen Mum died - the match cut to a static slide with "In Memoriam" over the flag and some sombre music, at which point (presumably like everyone else) I turned to BBC One to find out what had actually happened. The slide stayed up for a good few minutes before cutting back to the match, where the commentators seemed to have no idea they'd been off air.

The BBC had documented plans for the reporting of the death of all senior members of the Royal Family. They followed the procedure for that category of obituary once confirmed, though of course it starting as a traffic accident, with news reports on BBC 1 interrupting the late film. It was an excellent decision by the late presentation and news editors to put BBC World on BBC 1 overnight, as otherwise BBC 1 would have closed down and the transmitters would have switched themselves off. It took a fair amount of time to wake the transmission network up in those days (hence Testcard/Tone for half and hour (?) and Ceefax/Music for 15 minutes before the first scheduled programmes). The BBC certainly didn't base the coverage of Diana's death on the procedure for the Queen Mother, Diana had her own procedure to follow (though it shared many common elements).

Following events like this, there are always lessons learnt, procedures amended and so on.

And no matter how many procedures and rehearsals and preperation is done, it's never the same as it actually happens

And the plans are generally run through and updated regularly. I was told there was a production meeting and recce for Thatcher's funeral long-arranged for April 17th 2013, which had to be hastily brought forward...

IIRC from working at the Beeb at the time of Diana's death, they had different obit categories for members of the Royal Family, and different procedures depending on the seniority of the individual.

Category 1 included the Queen, Prince Charles, the Queen Mother and Prince William, and possibly the Prime Minister. I'm fairly certain that Diana had been removed from Category 1 after her divorce from Prince Charles as technically she was no longer a member of the Royal Family and should have received much lower key coverage. In the end, understandably, the coverage was very much in line with the Category 1 procedure.

This has already been confirmed, but in those days the regular PremPlus slot was Sunday lunchtime. However because it was the Easter weekend and there was a full fixture list on Easter Monday, for the only time that season there was a live game on Saturday teatime. I remember The Premiership that night dropped the opening titles (Des: "No Beautiful Day tonight, in the circumstances we felt it wasn't") and that all the elaborate graphics had been toned down a bit.



According to Matthew Rudd's brilliant blog about being on air on Hallam that night, Diana would still have been in Category 1 as the mother of someone else on it.

ISTR back then there were Categories 1, 2a, 2b and 3. I forget which category Diana was in, but given the unexpected nature of her death, it was treated more or less as as Category 1.

It remains the only time the BBC "Family" symbol ever went to air, between the end of BBC World coverage and the start of coverage coming from the domestic news studio. By this time all BBC channels had already merged but the junction between the two was deemed to be a suitable point at which to formally introduce the single programme again. I think this was at 0630.

There was something very eerie about the "This is BBC Television from London" as if WWIII has just broken out.

Bizarrely, they attempted a similar announcement when the Queen Mother died, for no apparent reason ("This is BBC Television News"). It came across a little odd to me, trying to be pompous for the sake of it - "This is BBC News" would have sufficed, considering that was the actual brand.