Operation London Bridge: the death of the Queen

It was said that the old News studios in TV Centre's Spur kept an emergency black tie on hand. When Diana died, Martyn Lewis was called in to do the newsflash as he lived nearest to TV Centre.

Pure conjecture, but in terms of getting a Huw Edwards type figure in to handle the obit, that probably would happen if there was sufficient time given by the embargo, although with no disrespect to Huw, somebody like Jane Hill or Simon McCoy who does rolling news on a daily basis might be a more appropriate choice, Huw tends to do more set piece bulletins rather than rolling news these days.

But again that is likely to depend on the circumstances, whether it is likely to be pretty much set piece tributes or whether, like Diana, the circumstances are that there is more of a breaking news element to it. I guess that equally if there is somebody around who has taken part in a recent obit rehearsal they might get the nod ahead of somebody who hasn't been involved in one for a while.

Well, it depends, and all channels certainly have senior presenters on call in the case of major breaking stories. Obviously on the BBC there'll always be someone there because they're broadcasting all day but there are still senior presenters - not just Huw but also Fiona Bruce, Sophie Raworth and George Alagiah. In Roger Mosey's book he talks about being controller of Five Live when Diana died and phoning up senior presenters to come in, and one did come in straight from a party but was so drunk they went straight home again.

In this case you are going to need some familiarity. The obvious example is 9/11 when BBC1 joined up with News 24 but with totally unfamiliar presenters, John Nicolson and Valerie Sanderson broke it, and then you went through Peter Dobbie, Jane Hill and Gavin Esler, none of whom were familiar to the mass audience, before Huw Edwards finally appeared several hours later. Obviously it's different now in that News 24 is totally integrated within BBC News and the presenters work across both - so when they rolled last Wednesday you had Simon McCoy and Reeta Chakrabarti who are regulars on BBC1 - so it's less of a problem, but even so if it's a potentially distressing and unsettling situation, you do want a familiar face there (would have been the same with ITV if Scotland had voted yes in the referendum and it was being announced by the likes of Bernard Ponsonby on the network).

I mean, the duty presenters can certainly do it, but most of the senior presenters probably live quite close by and can get there fairly quickly. Jeremy Vine was scheduled to present Newsnight on 9/11 and did a perfectly good job of it, though they did actually try and get Paxman in but he was on holiday and couldn't get back in time.

With the death of the Queen unlike many other breaking stories you could almost pre-record the news report with a senior presenter. We all know most of the reports to be played out are in the can ready to go so although it won't happen in theory you could put together something quite generic to cover the eventuality and give you more time.

In related news, it was on this day fifteen years ago that we lost the Queen Mother. The interruption on BBC Two is still a fascinating bit of continuity. I think BBC Worldwide took it down recently.

It's still on TV Whirl: https://www.tvwhirl.co.uk/play?id=2099

Well, obviously you wouldn't, because you don't pre-record news bulletins. However as Roger Mosey says, the mistake they made with the Queen Mother was to treat it as breaking news, when they should have just gone straight to the obit, which would at least have given them a bit of time to sort themselves out.

Mosey also says that they had a rota of people on call for emergencies which meant half did it one week and the other half the next. Unfortunately when Diana died they realised too late that it meant if stuff happened at that time, it was slap bang in the middle and so nobody was on call.

Excuse the link to the Daily Fail, but they ran extracts from Peter Sissons' memoirs about the day in question

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1349871/Peter-Sissons-BBC-bosses-ordered-downplay-Queen-Mothers-death.html

Well it's been mentioned now, so please enlighten us?

Part of the spec, Page 53 here

http://www.interactive-radio-system.com/docs/EN50067_RDS_Standard.pdf

I'm not aware it's ever been used legitimately in the UK (yet !) ?

I think it was mentioned a few pages back - it's where the programme type changes to Alert.

And the whole reason for this particular event having the pre-planning and surrounding formalities to the extent we've been discussing on this thread is because of it being "distressing and unsettling" - Elizabeth II is a symbol of stability in a staggeringly fast-changing world, no matter what else she is or isn't, and carries a lot of weight through that symbolism. Somehow it feels like that announcement ought to go to a heavyweight presenter rather than simply being a breaking news announcement that the on-duty anchor makes to the watching millions.

That might not be possible, Depending at what time of day and how long the ITV/SKY and the BBC get notification before any embargo can be broken. If its two hours at the Saturday morning, then Alas it may will fall to Maxine mawhinney and Kylie Pentelow.

With Queen mums death, Peter Sissons was on the BBC, he was never great with live breaking news, over on ITV Mary Nightingale who was rather new to the job but did a good job.