The Royal Baby

Even so, a clip show of The One Show is just the ultimate in disposable telly and given it was supposed to be "imminent", I am staggered they started showing it. They must have know full well it wasn't going to finish. To add to the bizarre nature, the announcer before it even said "'stEnders, Holby City, Luther - Tuesday night on BBC1", as if to suggest business as usual. It wouldn't have hurt to have said "If there's any news, we'll bring it to you", surely? They may have had to yank The One Show off after two minutes which would have looked demented.

Amazing decision, it really was.

I'm guessing one reason for the poor ratings last night was that at the end of 'stEnders they announced Panorama was coming up next, so by the time they came on most of the audience had already gone to Corrie and were none the wiser. Though if I was running BBC1 last night I'd have been doing updates between all the programmes anyway, even if it had just been Nicholas Witchell saying nothing had happened and then Panorama starting it might have kept a few more people hanging on. This has not been the greatest 24 hours for BBC1 presentation, you'd have to say. It's like everything was taking them by surprise.

The One Show must be devastated they're not on this week. I imagine Gyles Brandreth banging on the studio door.

They devoted a fair amount of time to it. After their headline sequence, Jon Snow said that they'd been given a two minute warning; then spent some time filling over a shot of the door and talking to Katie Razall at Buck House, and eventually ran a package about the day's non-events. When it looked like nothing was imminent, they got as far as introducing their top story VT before going back to the hospital - and then quickly got on with the rest of the programme.

So, do we think that the BBC got lucky with the timing of their newsflash; or was there a telly inside the front door of the hospital and they waited until they were live on BBC One?


Oh, I caught the end of 'Born to be King' on the News Channel this evening, and it had a shot of Will & Kate & little 'un at the end.

There hasn't been such a surprise for BBC News since last year when the BBC Director General resigned, at exactly the moment the BBC weekend news finished, meaning they missed it on BBC1 and missed the start on the News Channel.

Imagine if today's royal baby appearance had been done as part of The One Show. No on second thoughts, don't imagine that!

Or, better still, tell viewers if they want to look at a picture of a baby, they can switch to the BBC's dedicated baby pictures channel? I mean, I know it's only the One Show but it does show a certain contempt for your audience to promise a schedule (however plebeian) and then be willing to toss it out at no notice for a picture of a baby.

Perhaps one reason for the poor ratings is that quite a few people aren't actually that interested and think the whole thing has been hopelessly overblown?

BBC's on screen talent might have been good, but the behind the camera crew were poor. They completely messed up last night's flagship program the Ten O Clock news, they almost forgot the World channel by showing programs like The Papers and essentially scrapping Newsday entirely. Like I say, those on screen did fantastic but the presentation from what should now be a united service for events like this was sloppy.

Well, people definitely want to see the baby and want to know about it, you only have to look at the papers or go to any workplace in Britain. It's ludicrous to suggest it's just "pictures of a baby", as context-free to suggest Thatcher's death was just "an old woman dying".

But I think it is true that last night was a bit all over the place. In a way BBC1 had trouble in that it was to all intents and purposes over at 9.10 when the easel came out, but they then had to carry on to 9.30 at least and they also had the problem that the 9pm programme* was continuing after the news. They clearly couldn't start that now (and have it run past 10pm, or indeed run past midnight) so they had to fill. To my mind, they would have been better off putting that Raworth-fronted documentary at 9.30 because after that they were repeating VTs anyway but seemingly not. I also think that although there are people who'll watch rolling news because they like rolling news, most people don't like that kind of thing.

But given they do news specials at the drop of a hat, like when it's snowing, to plough on with The One Show, the ultimate in disposable telly, seems demented.

* Please note that if you are suggesting BBC1 should have stuck to its normal schedule last night you are suggesting you'd rather have seen a 100-minute pop-science show with Phil Tufnell.

BBC WN America has a special opening

Wonder why that set hasnt been given a makeover 7 months after the move to NBH

Several Reasons including that the set looks fine as it is and is surprisingly versatile, also they can't probably afford it and Singapore is I need of a much needed makeover 114 months after the clamshell rebrand and is currently 4 rebrands behind (I'm including 2007). Singapore actually have a surprisingly large space to play with at about 64m2 of Studio Space it's a shame they don't use it better.

Its also great the way that World News America often does special openings for example on the anniversary of 9/11 a couple of years back they did one.

A dangerous game to play as well. There's a reason news channels normally show an empty table, or a door, for extended periods of time - it's so they don't miss the big moment (see BBC Scotland and the Commonwealth Games announcement, when they'd disappeared off to a primary school as the decision was announced...)

I assume the logic was that they weren't sure precisely when the announcement would come. Had they done a news special and it overran then EastEnders would have been delayed for an unforseeable time.

As much as those of us on here don't fancy the idea of crashing into the News Channel without an announcement, most viewers won't care.

I imagine things would have been slightly more complex for ITV had they continued with scheduled programming, given the previous problems relating to the automation involved in the channel (the classic Mourinho moment, cutting off Mary Nightingale in her prime). Probably safer to avoid embarassment to write off the half hour and stick with the news. Whereas the Beeb had a networked show and could just crash in to a constant source.

EDIT: Mind you, as pointed out above, a lot of people would have been waiting for this moment, even if they weren't bothered about the rolling coverage otherwise.

Well according to ITV's Tim Ewart on tonights's NAT, the media were given a 5 minute warning ( even showed his reaction to the 5 minute warning). So once that warning had come you'd think they would have cut off at that point, with proper time to show an ident aswell.