[chris]

And this was indeed from ITN Productions.

[James2001]

I haven't watched it, but occasionally ITN Productions are commissioned to make these topical docs for C5 which are of a higher quality than you'd expect.

I remember them making one about the July 7th attacks, which I found even more interesting as it was the period when Sky were providing their news (not that it would stop them commissioning ITN of course).

[nwtv2003]

I remember them making one about the July 7th attacks, which I found even more interesting as it was the period when Sky were providing their news (not that it would stop them commissioning ITN of course).

Without going off topic too much, on the day itself Channel 5 carried on as normal until about 10:30am or so and they abandoned The Wright Stuff midway through and went to rolling Sky News coverage. I’m not sure what time they left the Sky News coverage and reverted to Five News itself.

[JACKLUFC1998]

I remember on the day the Queen died, despite the fact that the BBC made the official announcement, Channel 5 was the first PSB to announce it. I seem to remember that Channel 4 was the last main channel to go into rolling coverage mode, as whilst the BBC, ITV, Channel 5 and Sky we're all in rolling coverage mode reporting her death, Channel 4 was showing Hollyoaks, even though they interrupted it 2 minutes later to start their coverage.

[Stooky Bill]

It's more complicated than that. Operation Lion is the name given to the plans for any royal death. It includes all of the Bridges ops, Operation Unicorn and a couple of others (Overstudy being the obvious one). They are all overseen the the Bridges Secretariat within the Cabinet Office and the Earl Marshall's Office.

There isn't strictly an operation to cover the days in between the death and the funeral. It's all part of either Operation Unicorn, Operation Overstudy or Operation London Bridge. In this instance, it was a combination of Unicorn and London Bridge.

The plans are shared with broadcasters, etc. to facilitate coordination and to make things run as smoothly as possible. There's a screenshot somewhere on here of a control room in BBC Northern Ireland (I think) showing the heading for Operation Lion.

Yes, everything from D+1 (the day after she dies) to the end of the funeral was planned out, so that's everything from her journey back from Scotland, the proclamation, lying in state, the Kings tour of the nations etc. The TV companies had plans and resource bookings in place for a long time. 

The only vaguery when it happened (for a while at least) was which day was D+1. It was announced late on the Thurs ay so D+1 could have been Saturday. Nothing could be comfirmed until the Palace confirmed when it was. 

The only thing that wasn't and couldn't be planned was the day of the death itself. Ironic really as its the bit that was the most rehearsed. But as was said in the Channel 5 documentary you can't know how that's going to pan out

[aaron_scotland]

AIUI, the shot the BBC used outside the gates was pooled by them via a sat truck.

If I recall, Reuters or AP were infact the first ones outside Balmoral using LiveU or a mobile connection of some description.

Yes thats right, Reuters were there first with LiveU but the signal was pretty bad, BBC/Sky had sat trucks a few hours after, But they did have absolutely torrential rain, so much so Sky had to lower to QPSK modulation to try get the signal through.

[harshy]

Yes thats right, Reuters were there first with LiveU but the signal was pretty bad, BBC/Sky had sat trucks a few hours after, But they did have absolutely torrential rain, so much so Sky had to lower to QPSK modulation to try get the signal through.

Didn’t realise QPSK, 8PSK was to do with signal strength, that’s interesting I’ll have to Google it.

[aaron_scotland]

Didn’t realise QPSK, 8PSK was to do with signal strength, that’s interesting I’ll have to Google it.

Yup it locks far lower than 8PSK, at the expense of bitrate available.

[Orry Verducci]

Didn’t realise QPSK, 8PSK was to do with signal strength, that’s interesting I’ll have to Google it.

It doesn't affect the signal strength, but rather the density of the signal which in turn affects reliability in marginal conditions.

It's a bit complicated to explain, but basically they're different variants of modulating the analogue signal to carry digital data. QPSK can carry two bits of data within a symbol, 8PSK can carry three, so 8PSK can carry more data in the same bandwidth. However it does so by allowing more variations in the signal phase.

If the signal is noisy it becomes harder for receivers to determine the phase of the signal, which can cause the signal to be misread as neighbouring values resulting in corrupted data. 8PSK has more variations closer together, so as the signal gets noisier (as is the case with satellite rain fade) it starts to be misread quicker than QPSK. Therefore if the 8PSK signal is unreliable switching to QPSK is a quick and easy way to increase the signal to noise ratio and restore solid reception, at the expense if reducing the data you can uplink (i.e. lower video birate required).

To put it in to layman's terms, it's the difference between listening to someone talk fast on a weak radio signal, or listening to someone talk slowly. Both are noisy and hard to understand, but you'll mostly make out what the person talking slowly is saying, whereas you'll get little of the person talking fast.

[Stooky Bill]

not knowing what the mobile coverage is like in the area - could they have used one of those 4G/5G units instead of or until the sat truck turned up? are any of the news orgs doing anything with starlink and other easy-to use LEO systems? seems like the textbook use case.

Though if that was in Aberdeen it would take the same amount of time to get to Balmoral as a sat truck. 

A lot of it depends on luck a sat truck or crew can be at a location for breaking news very quickly if they were by happy coincidence despatched to that area for another story in the morning