Operation London Bridge: the death of the Queen

There is a clue as to the inspiration elsewhere in the article.

Indeed - I'm aware of what it is, and tube stations are well off the mark.

Well, indeed - I think it was said that they wouldn't announce his death outside daylight hours, and then they did it at ten o'clock at night. People complained that night about the Ten O'Clock News being nothing but, but the news had just broken and all the tributes were coming in. Had the news broken earlier in the day, they'd have more time to consider it.

Mosey also says in his book that the mistake with the Queen Mother was to treat it as "breaking news" and go to interviews and OBs, when what they should have done was just announce it and then go straight to the obits. Not helped by them spending most of the first half hour trying to get hold of Lorraine Heggessey in Canada.

An interesting read. It would be very odd to hear a BBC newsreader start with something like “It is with the greatest sorrow that we make the following announcement...”!


Swan yeah but Exercise Class? Surely not. Worrying though that's it's an up to date list. Hopefully as Blake mentioned, that is still a mistake and the decision hasn't been reversed.

Surely the safest decision is to go to the ribbon BBC ident that has popped up over the last year or so? It avoids the risk of any inappropriate idents (i.e. from a very new rebrand!), can loop forever and looks suitably formal.

I very much doubt Exercise Class would be used when they have a specific purpose neutral ident (Forest) or, as you say, the even more neutral ribbon.

I really enjoyed reading the article. Does anybody have a recording from Radio 1's 'sombre' playlist from the morning Princess Dianna died? Must have been quite an eerie thing to hear.

I doubt the reference to 'exercise class' is in the official documentation, that'll be a BBC internal issue. The writer probably added that bit himself.

As well as Peter Sisson's tie I recall he (quite badly) read out three sentences at the start which all said the same thing

And don't mention Nelson Mandela, everything from crashing out of Mrs Brown to that awful continuity announcement, to the fact that the extended hour long bulletin ignored everything else that had dominated the news up to an hour previous was just a catalogue of errors that wasn't their finest hour.

Regarding normal programming on the night the Queen Mother died, although Alright on the Night might seem crass, in reality its relatively inoffensive humour that was probably what the nation wanted. It wasn't extreme violent drama or swearing or anything cutting edge.

What plans for the other channels ? Would all the ITV multi channels switch to main ITV, would C4 & C5 provide rolling coverage ?

What would the plans for children's channels? Would they cut to the main BBC/ITV channel or could that scar them?

I bet the digital channels would carry on as normal

I doubt you'd even get the overlayed message anymore, as in this day and age its unnecessary, everyone will have received an alert and turned over to a main channel anyway.

The childrens channels may run normal programming, with a caption saying "Viewers are asked to tune to BBC news or ITV for an important announcement from Buckingham palace". That was what they had on screen with the programmes on Nickelodeon on the morning following Diana's death.

QVC was broadcasting a static caption and no programming, and I would expect the shopping channels to do the same in this instance.

I doubt the BBC could maintain the sort of schedule outlined in the article for 9 days in a multi-media age, and ITV, C4 & C5 even less so for commercial reasons - unless they have "Royal Funeral - sponsored by . . . ."


Don't you think people would be turning to other channels/media in droves in a matter of 24/48 hours? Public interest in news wanes fast these days, and I think the BBC are being rather optimistic about how long they can keep an audience 'interested' in such circumstances? Once someone has died there is nothing new to report.

The change of an hereditary Head of State would be less relevant to many than a change of PM - and that only has mileage for a day or so, until a new cabinet is announced. There is nothing 'new' happening about the new Head of State until the coronation, which would be about a year later.

I would be glued to the first few days, for my interest in TV presentation, obviously. After that, I suspect it would become rather repetitive and tedious.

In this connected social media world, it's very hard to stop these things getting out.