Peter Sissons has died.

He was one of the last 'heavyweight' presenters, along with Sir Trevor and Michael Buerk. I get the impression he fell out of favour with the bosses at the Beeb, as he was seen as a bit old-fashioned in their eyes. But he was a real 'voice of God' type presenter.

As a slight sidebar, my dad went to school with him (as well as Macca and George Harrison).

Here's Peter at the end of the Sunday Evening Network bulletin in 2008, where the closing sting failed to play so Peter gets caught out saying well done to fellow Sports presenter Francis Collings.

This may or may not be relevant but Martyn was the senior newsreader who lived closest to TV Centre, hence him getting the call to come in for the Diana newsflash. He may have stepped in at short notice on other occasions if the scheduled newsreader was taken ill or something.

Out of topic but this ident creeped me out when I was little....

His daughter comments, following a Tweet from Jon Snow ....

Is the newscast from Dunblane anywhere to watch? Would be interesting.

I assume it was shown on telly, I couldn’t see it in any of the videos here.

And let's not forget this: Peter Sissons introducing BBC News with the best ever long intro EVER!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU088UQ51D0

And here's Peter chatting to Michael Parkinson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_nnk4h6668

Indeed. I was meaning post 97 when the BBC blocks were introduced. Can't find it but I'm pretty sure I've seen a photo somewhere on the interweb.



Indeed, he talks about it in his autobiography, where he called it one of his biggest challenges as a newsreader, and also one of the few times he presented on location.

Indeed. I hope Peter wrote this - seems likely as the style is very similar to the Dando bulletin close which I remember vividly at the time, partly because of the quality of the journalism but also because it was the only time I ever saw a presenter stray out of the chromakeyed area of that set (which given the strength of emotions that day you can forgive him for).

I agree the brevity of the headlines is so much better than we get now, though I fear it has gone out of fashion in favour of using the opening as a mini bulletin in itself. In those days the headlines would sound a bit like newspaper front pages - not necessarily the most natural spoken words but certainly summed up the story quickly.

The start of the 12th Sep 2001 bulletin is also a masterclass in bringing home the human side of a story - something Tom Bradby tries to do every night but Sissons nailed in this one script.

A brief behind the scenes clip of what looks like N6 being used in the blue VR era in this report (around 1:40 in).

There was a short tribute by Fiona at the end of Question Time last night, she got a bit emotional as obviously she would have worked with him quite a bit as a news colleague too

The control room/gallery is not N6 - it's possibly N2 I think. The layout is wrong and the equipment is too old (you can see a CDL rather than Sony vision mixer. N6, N8 and N9 all had Sony 7350s, N1, N2 and N3 had CDLs)

Looking at the studio shot the lighting and cameras make me think it's not N6 (as the cameras aren't LDKs) and it doesn't look like N2 as the camera isn't on a Radamec robotic pedestal - so it may be N1 or N3 (which were remote PTZs but not robotic). As it looks like BBC One output I think it's probably N3 (which had a smaller desk in it than N2 or N1)

Chances are Nick Higham or his producer just used generic Six O'Clock News library pictures.

https://www.tvforum.co.uk/forums/post1025073#post-1025073 may be of interest.