Olympic Torch TV Coverage

It's ridiculous that tonight's arrival in the host city at the Tower around 8pm isn't getting live coverage on BBC1 or BBC2 - surely they could have timed tonights football around it (or the Tower arrival around the football - half an hour later would fall in half time).

BBC London News were live from Guildford for the cauldron lighting, however like other regions, the bearer was late by a couple of minutes.

Riz Lateef hosted with Wendy Hurrell in the crowds, probably a dry run for next Wednesday's 7pm show.

(Also posted in the Meridian, BBC South & South East Thread)

South Today were also live at the Guildford torch ceremony.

They obviously just wanted to claim to be the final region to have the torch, pre-London. (Assuming ST's claim to cover Guildford at all is agreeable, then in terms of the Torch entering actual "county" (or whatever type of thing is!) of Greater London itself, ST's claim is accurate).

I wonder whether South East Today also made the same claim? (e.g. on the basis that the Torch would enter some "London TV region"-only parts of Surrey, albeit not Greater London itself, immediately after leaving the SET patch).

At least with the pan-regional latter half of Meridian Tonight, the "last-region-before-London" claim is definitely true, regardless of exactly where in Kent and/or Surrey it left the overall Meridian patch for the final time!

ST once again stayed on the air throughout all the 18:57-ish trailers, up until the start of the BBC One ident into The One Show. They made a slightly cleaner job of it than on Monday though. ST itself briefly cut to a full-screen looped gold-and-black background (derived from the Torch Relay trailers), with a "BBC South" copyright caption on a namestrap. Audio during this was the ambient sound from the Guildford OB quickly faded to silence.

The last torchbearer of the day didn't quite make it to the cauldron whilst ST was still on air. The ST reporter's commentary promised that they would bring us footage of the cauldron-lighting in the 22:25 bulletin. Not the triumphant climax to the programme that they'd hoped for, then!

Although it was all a bit of an anti-climax tonight really proved for me why "news" shouldn't handle these events - most of coverage being split screen and the obligatory graphics everywhere - we can see the Olympic Torch has arrived in London, we don't need a big white strap telling us so!

Will Billy Mitchell's coverage be live on torch cam?

I think torch cam has finished for the day, so probably not.

BBC One London's schedule has changed to The One Show tomorrow instead.

So it has. The programme page still exists for the London Torch Relay programme, but has no broadcast times.

I'd heard that the One Show might be doing another OB this week, so it's possible they could be down at Ally Pally, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Bit of a mystery, this one!

BREAKING NEWS from the One Show: Sir Bruce Forsyth to carry the Olympic Torch in London tomorrow.

I wonder if he'll do one of his 'jiggs' along the road, shout 'good game good game' - 'didn't I do well'... and do his trademark pose at the end!

Everyone keep their sets tuned to BBC Olympics 13 tomorrow then!

I'm probably slow here, but it's only just occurred to me that the Orbit could possibly the cauldron for the flame?

As well as the BBC News Channel, I'm sure they'll dip in to that section of it too.