7/7 Anniversary

We have had threads in the past near the tenth anniversary of events such as the death of Diana and 9/11. These threads have often brought up fascinating memories of those who watched the coverage on TV, or were behind the scenes when the events unfolded. Therefore, I thought it would be appropriate to open a thread on today, the tenth anniversary of the bombings in London.

Personally, I have vivid memories of the summer of 2005 as a whole. I was still in school at the time, and word got round that there had been electrical accident on the London Underground - this was of course based on the early reports suggesting it was just a 'power surge'. It was only when I got home to find that virtually all of the channels had suspended programming or were taking rolling news.

Five were showing Sky News as this was shortly after they had signed the contract to take over ITN as their news provider. I can't recall whether BBC Two took BBC News 24 - I presume it did - or what Channel 4 showed. The ITV News Channel was still on air at the time, to be closed at the end of the year. I stayed on the BBC all day. I remember feeling particularly shaken seeing as I had visited London for the first time just a few months before.

EDIT: Here is the original thread from the day.

There are images on TV Live of some of the coverage.

I find old threads far more interesting than I probably should but reading through that it just highlights how so much has changed in the last 10 years in the television industry, yet on other fronts some of the questions are still the same. Notable questions in that thread about how the local channels of the time covered it - quite a bit of info about Channel M and also the question about "London TV" which was on Sky at the time and had covered the Olympic announcement the day before, but seemingly were not equipped at all to cover the events of 7/7.

It is also a great account of what happened that day - the modern day equivalent of Samuel Pepys diary.

A random musing is how someone remarks that ITV1 started simulcasting the ITV News Channel at 10:12 when 'the chat show they were showing went into a break'

Said chat show had just started 3 days previously and was something called The Jeremy Kyle Show.

I think 7/7 was a time when News Channel's came to the fore in a significant way. Everybody was glued to the news channels to get information on events taking place and the consequences of this disaster. Today I think News Channels are less significant and believe people would turn to twitter as a first port of call when something like this takes place to get the most up to date information. Also excellent use of the Skycopter which barely ever seems to get used these days.

The problem with Twitter and big events is that any value quickly disappears as the signal:noise falls through the floor. Any developing situation just becomes more and more confusing as the world's supply of conspiracy theorists, nosy parkers, nutters, loonies, extremists and irritating sods start posting their own pet theories.

If you only looked at Twitter during the Alton Towers incident (and ignored anything that was sourced from one of the news channels) you'd think numerous people had died, the ride had collapsed, the park had been evacuated, the ride was still open, no emergency services were attending and all sorts of other nonsense (most of which ended up being clarified by the news channel helicopters turning up).

Reading through that thread really is quite eerie. It's also quite odd to see people comment things like 'ITV News to roll until 7pm' 'A bit OTT, there isn't much more to report', as the scale of what had happened was clearly still not apparent. And as already mentioned, the thread really does show how much has changed in terms of how broadcasters do things over the course of the past ten years - there are mentions to CiTV (as a programming block on ITV?) being on ITV2 for the afternoon, Channel 4 News at Noon, Nick Robinson being on 'gardening leave' at ITV and a Jeremy Paxman BBC News Special, all of which are no more.

Also a mention of Central News South doing a pan Central bulletin, where it was nice to see a non corporate set. Of course that region no longer exists. Talk of Bill Turnbull hosting Breakfast rather than drafting in Dermot on his day off. Andrea Catherwood on ITV News, Julie Etchingham on Sky. The Bill still aired as normal that night. GMTV with a news special next morning. Trevor McDonald doing News at Ten.

Looking at our logs for 7/7/05:

09:45:45 - 30" newsflash between Kyle parts 2 and 3
10:12:41 - ITN openender after Kyle part 3, finally off air 18:59:41

Regional slot at 1930 seemed to have a few of the regions do news specials, I imagine partly because they'd not put anything out since GMTV:

London - ITV News Special
Granada - Go North West
Border - Border at War
Yorkshire/Tyne Tees - The Dales Diary
Meridian - Meridian Tonight Special
Anglia - Anglia Tonight Special
Central - Central News Special
West - Garden Trail
Wales - Llangollen 2005
Westcountry - Westcountry Garden of the Year
Scottish/Grampian - Scottish Golf Show
UTV - Journeys
Channel - Channel Report

They also done a pan-regional special from Heathrow in 2006 when the Airplane terror threats took place and the liquids luggage restrictions took place. I believe the Central South team may have won awards for both those specials?
And then within a few months they were closed down. A great shame.

Twitter only reaches a certain element of the population. My mum will watch the News Channel. She certainly won't be checking Twitter.

I remember shows about Heathrow featuring on Central here on the North Wales border. That's local TV.