Sweden Referendum Coverage

Sweden goes to the polls today to vote whether to keep the Króna, or adopt the Euro. This comes just days however after Euro campaigner and Foreign Secretary Anna Lindh was murdered.

This will be a pivotal point for Britain. We will see whether a centre left government successfully steer the nation to vote 'Ja' to the Euro. Although the overall majority may be slightly ambiguous with people possibly voting 'Ja' to the Euro in memory of Anna Lindh, polls suggested they had succeeded. This, obviously, will become more clear during the day.

Because of this I would expect to see some coverage on the news channels. From what I gather there will be a BBC News Special at 2000BST with Jon Sopel live in Stockholm. I wonder if we see the music used for the French Elections resurrected. People with BBC World, have you indeed seen any special programme coverage of the vote?

It will be interesting to see which way this goes, I suspect Sky will break into coverage as and when, there is nothing scheduled.

When is the result officially annouced?

I'm amazed at the lack of coverage, frankly. I'd seen almost nothing until the foreign minister was murdered.

When Denmark went to the polls (and ended up voting "no", IIRC, with something like 51%-49%) there was a fair bit beforehand, but Sweden somehow seems to be less interesting to the media.

What would be more interesting would be to watch German and French telly when the result is announced. LCI (TF1's news channel) and DWTV both broadcast on the internet, I think. They're almost certain to have a whole selection of p-ssed off ministers when the "no" vote comes through.

Just having a look at the SVT website (Sweden's BBC, if you will); can't say I speak brilliant Swedish, but from what I can gather SVT are showing their main programme from 8pm-11pm CET. They break in at 11pm for something called "Rapport", which appears to be a sort of ITV Tonight-cum-NBC Dateline pseudo-news show. This is followed by a news analysis programme, then a ten minute programme that I don't understand, then another Rapport programme. The programming ends at 20 past midnight when "24 minuter" finishes.

SVT2 is also carrying coverage of its own.

Well BBC World have an extra director scheduled for this eveing, so I guess they are doing something special.

I will have a look at BBC World tonight at 8 then!

Yes, BBC World will be having a special programme at 8pm, until 9.30pm. This is with Jon Sopel, and seems to be going out on News 24 too. I was wondering whether it would be produced by News 24 or by BBC World, but if World have scheduled an extra director, then I presume they will be producing it, which is good news!

Yes since Marcus has said that BBC World will have a extra director, it means BBC World will produce it, with News 24 opting in and out of the World feed.

THANK GOD! is all I can say - I could imagine News 24 trying to produce it! what a calamity!

Has there been a News Special, or themed opening titles on BBC World yet?

Not that I have seen.

Its usually just the TOTH thats dedicated to the programme - in this case 8 / 9pm. Its not like Iraq where they had the special titles for every hour.

(this is presuming there is special titles tonight).

The best special I've seen was Nik Gowing fronting the German elections last year.

Anyone know why one of the news miniscreens (either BBCi news or Sky News Active screen eight) is not used to rebroadcast a live clean feed of SVT's referendum programme.?

I'm sure there are a small minority of Swedes in this country who would like to watch the broadcast in the native language (not to say a handful of anoraks who are interested in overseas 'big event' tv presentation).

It surely can't be a rights issue can it?

What's the time difference between here and Sweden? I can never remember if it's one hour or two hours...