And then, with a tongue in cheek..


From The Media Blog.


"Has it not crossed you mind that actually the 2,400 complaints you initially received equated to little more than 0.015 per cent of the viewing audience?.....

..Finally, I would like to say, thank goodness for the Daily Mail and The Telegraph who have been a rock through all this scandal, ensuring people such as myself who missed the coverage completely were kept informed as to which bits we were meant to find offensive."

"Yougov / Sunday Times" poll.

Page 9 refers to "The BBC" and the coverage.

It may be found here.

Torin Douglas (BBC Media Correspondent) writes on the BBC web-site:-


"As interviews begin for one of the biggest jobs in public life, the candidates must surely expect to be asked what they thought of the Diamond Jubilee coverage as a whole - and the river pageant in particular - and how well the BBC responded to its critics?"

A feeble excuse using the technicalities , On an operation of this size and historical significance any really organised Senior Producer would have had a fall back set up of some land based cameras and a commentator so that at least the procession could have been seen from one viewpoint, in fact the lack of that was one of the great weaknesses of the coverage.
The BBC has always blamed 'technical difficulties' as an excuse for production inadequacies as any ex-engineer will verify.

As a strictly radio person in my time at the Beeb, it seemed to me that one of the failings of the processions and the Pageant was that there were too many very brief ultra-close-up shots and too few wide and longer duration shots. Would someone from TV confirm my theory that this is because TV producers were hoping to use HDV to get revealing facials  (i.e. HMQ scowling, HRH picking his nose) rather than conveying the bigger
story?   Also there seemed to be far too many cameras?   If you have a recording, look at the Procession from Westminster, as an example. If I am right then it is a trend I hope will soon be reversed.

Some years ago when I was involved in  the Communications planning for a possible Royal Event going from central London to Windsor, we surveyed loads of possible camera sites all along the A4 to provide "continuous coverage".
So one had single camera positions at Hyde Park Corner, Knightsbridge, Earls Court, Hammersmith, Hogarth Roundabout - to name just a few
However, shortly after, with a chance in thoughts, it was realised that it was far far better to have fewer groups of several cameras so the scene could be established beforehand, the whole procession shown arriving and leaving and still have a camera to do close-ups at the relevant point.
All this seems to have been forgotten now and so a very "thin" continuous coverage is provided with no "establishing shots" and minimal production skills (or scanners) required at intermediate sites to give lots of interesting views.
I suppose it is "production efficient" to bring everything to one site and do simple continuous single camera shots.

Ah well - plus ca change!

Mike