I read somewhere that people were complaining about that but there were loads of channels, free, that had other things on. I flicked through them on Friday night and had I not wanted to watch something about the Duke of Edinburgh, it wouldn't have been difficult to choose something else.
The point is about the same coverage across multiple channels. I have no particular issue (albeit see below) with the BBC covering the death, but there is no justification whatsoever for it to be on multiple channels that are all universally available. The most appropriate place for such news, would be the BBC News channel, but I understand that there will still be a relatively small number of people who only get the five analogue channels, so I guess it would have to be either BBC 1 or 2, but not both - plus the News channel etc.
As it was I really liked the programmes.
Fine - no-one is stopping you watching it. But did you watch the programmes simultaneously on both BBC1 and 2 (and the News channel!). The issue isn't about you being able to watch coverage about the Duke but others being able to choose not to - and by blanket covering across all channels the BBC was effectively saying you shouldn't be able to watch anything else. It cannot control other broadcasters, but that's the message it sent for the channels it controls.
The complainers make me wonder can nobody put up with the slightest inconvenience for a short while? Yesterday all was virtually back to normal.
But it is an unnecessary inconvenience - the BBC could have had the coverage on one channel only. And it isn't really the inconvenience but the impression that we should be interested and watching the coverage and the BBC will make sure you cannot watch anything else on its channels. That, in my opinion, is wrong - and as much as the BBC gets lots right it really is poor when covering the 'establishment' in various forms (including the Royals and religion), in part because I think it sees itself as part of the establishment too and therefore cannot be a dispassionate observer.
I found the programmes about him fascinating &would watch some again.
Fine - no one is stopping you - but the BBC was stopping anyone who didn't want to watch its programmes from watching anything else on its channels.
But there is a broader issue - in reality there was hardly any actual news - the Duke has died - that's it, until there are details of funeral etc there is no more news. So most of the coverage wasn't actually news, but obituary/remembrance pieces. And those were unflinchingly (but understandably) biased. You aren't going to say anything bad about a person who has just died so the wall to wall coverage completely glossed over his controversial side - his jaw-dropping comments, that happened with monotonous regularity. At best there were some euphemisms (he spoke his mind - nope at times he was rude and deeply offensive in comments made during public duties). Indeed I heard one fawning commentator say he has always diplomatic (I mean WTF!).
And of course the coverage (certainly what I heard) never touched on the broader issue of royalty vs republicanism - in effect why are we celebrating this man in the first place.
So my point is that if you are going to give wall to wall coverage of a person's life surely you need to be balanced in you view. But of course the time to be balanced (and therefore report the bad stuff) probably isn't when a person has just died, so better not to give wall to wall, but completely unbalanced coverage.
