[Steve in Pudsey]

I see that Autoscript have a voice control product, has that been trialled anywhere in the UK?

[Technologist]

The BBC trialed a system in 2001 see WHP 015 page 9
downloads.bbc.co.uk 
It formed the basis of an MPhil thesis
BBC R&D was working with speech to text from say 30 years ago.
And the white paper mentioned covers most of them..

Prompter systems did not have to have very good speech to text as you already had the script….
And likewise the auto alignment and “blocking up” of real-time subtitles into IPlayer
And also used as part if the rough creation of prepared subtitles e.g Eastenders…
And as it had the script it parsed the whole episode and chose non clashing colours

[IanJRedman]

With the greatest of respect to the man, shouldn't a properly trained newsreader/presenter understand that stamping on the floor and not saying anything looks remarkably amateurish? I'd assume someone worth their salt would either be able to cover it up or at least be honest with the viewer that there's a problem (quicker than he did).

In fairness, this was probably one of those occasions that simply became a blind panic. It would be understandable if there just wasn't much rational thinking in the heat of the moment.