CA
AIUI there was some notice given to the main networks that an important statement was coming, but BBC Management did not pass this onto the Newsroom as they were afraid it would leak. Which is why, when it did break, the BBC Newsroom were so unprepared.
They were told in plenty of time. The rumours had been flying around for hours across the media and had plenty of tributes lined up. The biggest problem with the BBC's coverage was that Sissons was a bumbling mess, his interview with Margaret Rhodes was dreadful and was saved from catastrophe on numerous occasions by Jennie Bond. Even in his self serving Autobiography he admits that it wasn't his finest hour. The Burgundy tie was the least of his problems that night. It's always very easy to blame the "management"
He got some stick, because what he said about having no time to prepare before the 5pm obit broadcast, is incorrect.
You don't forget times and places when news like this broke, and I was producing radio coverage of a football game that day. The PA 'snap' embargo of the death of the QM came on the news wire screen in my studio at 4.16pm. IRN/ITN then confirmed at 4.20. By 4.30, full details of the network obit major story proccedure at 5pm and what to do and which IRN feed to route through the studio mixer.
For an expirenced journalist/broadcast of the calibre of Sisssons, to try a claim he had less than 20 mins from knowing, to being on air is, given the news wires were humming from 4.15 is utter twodge on a grand scale.
You don't forget times and places when news like this broke, and I was producing radio coverage of a football game that day. The PA 'snap' embargo of the death of the QM came on the news wire screen in my studio at 4.16pm. IRN/ITN then confirmed at 4.20. By 4.30, full details of the network obit major story proccedure at 5pm and what to do and which IRN feed to route through the studio mixer.
For an expirenced journalist/broadcast of the calibre of Sisssons, to try a claim he had less than 20 mins from knowing, to being on air is, given the news wires were humming from 4.15 is utter twodge on a grand scale.
AIUI there was some notice given to the main networks that an important statement was coming, but BBC Management did not pass this onto the Newsroom as they were afraid it would leak. Which is why, when it did break, the BBC Newsroom were so unprepared.
They were told in plenty of time. The rumours had been flying around for hours across the media and had plenty of tributes lined up. The biggest problem with the BBC's coverage was that Sissons was a bumbling mess, his interview with Margaret Rhodes was dreadful and was saved from catastrophe on numerous occasions by Jennie Bond. Even in his self serving Autobiography he admits that it wasn't his finest hour. The Burgundy tie was the least of his problems that night. It's always very easy to blame the "management"
