[Transmission]

Apologies if this has already been touched upon, but having thought back to how the media reacted to the news-before-the-news, would BBC One, ITV and C5 have gone into rolling news mode if they didn't know the Queen's demise was imminent?

I know BBC One, at least, started to simulcast BBC News at least a couple of hours before HM actually died. I just wonder how they would've justified all that coverage if it'd transpired she pulled through that day.

There were preparations for what BBC One might do if no announcement came. There was talk of attempting to get the regional news away post-7pm, though in practice I wonder if they really would have taken the risk of having to do a network recall. It was thought that if no announcement came by a certain point in the evening, nothing new would come from the palace until morning so there were constantly-changing plans about when to return to schedules. I think it was Masterchef that would have been replaced with something else because of a reference to the jubilee.

There were a number of factors as the day went on which meant the newsrooms would have been fairly confident that the news was a matter of days away if not hours. So it would have been back to rolling news the next day unless there was a significant change in the news.

[freeview87]

As is noted in the C5 programme, editors constantly heard things via sources that all wasn't well that day. Although you can never be 100% without hearing from the Palace, it was evident from the family rushing to her bedside that we were in the final hours, and that turned out to be the case.

[steve]

And, as the programme also mentioned, the Palace never commented on her health unless there was good reason to. So the phrasing used, and the fact it was used at all, was why BBC One ‘interrupted this programme’ six hours before the death was announced and was rolling through that time.

[ViridianFan]

As mentioned the health of the royal family is a never mad en public so that announcement at noon was (for want of a better way of putting this) a warning to be prepared. 

I know someone who was involved in operation London Bridge and they had been initially told an announcement would be made at 1800. I know for the ringing of church bells the cut off was 1800 for ringing that evening, and I believe that it was also the cut off point for it being D day. Id need to dig out all the planning we had for ringing however it being at 1830 a lot of places did D day events. 

An article I read by an ex bbc producers said it would be likely that the bbc and other broadcasters would have made aware prior to the official announcement from Buckingham Palace, if this happened or not I’m not sure. I believe the PM was informed just after 1615.

[Newshound47]

You could feel with the Duke of Edinburgh’s death the slight delay not having the warning caused as only a few journalists seemed to even knew an an lu meant of some sort was coming at 12 and fewer still knew what was possibly going to be in it.

[JACKLUFC1998]

Who was the first of the US networks to break the news of her being unwell that day? As I know when the news of her death broke , CNN was the first of the cable news networks to announce it, whilst ABC was the first of the three main networks to break the news (I remember when her death was announced, both ABC and NBC went into special report mode for 2.5 hours, whereas CBS was only in special report mode for an hour)

[UTVLifer]

In the documentary I think both Dan Walker and Dermot Murnagham said that they knew the news was coming before the Palace announced it at 18:30

[Steve in Pudsey]

You could feel with the Duke of Edinburgh’s death the slight delay not having the warning caused as only a few journalists seemed to even knew an an lu meant of some sort was coming at 12 and fewer still knew what was possibly going to be in it.

I think there was some kind of warning, you can see people running across the BBC newsroom on the TOTH sequence a few minutes before it's announced

[TVViewer256]

I think there was some kind of warning, you can see people running across the BBC newsroom on the TOTH sequence a few minutes before it's announced

I can’t remember where but I do seem to recall reading that news organisations were told that the Duke’s health was declining the day before and to prepare for potential news.

[chris]

It may interest some to know ITV News had a planned staff party that night of the Queen’s death. It was cancelled quite late in the day!