[newsjunkie]

As has already been said, the broadcasters were never told exactly what was happening - but were reading a lot into the official statements and the movement of the royal family.

One interesting point from ITV is that their plans had changed in recent years. For many years we had planned for a likely scenario where we would be on air with rolling coverage when the announcement came. But the decision more recently had been taken that this would not be the case and that we would only come on the air in the event of a formal announcement.

Obviously in the end coverage began several hours before the announcement. By the time we hit 6pm discussions were already beginning about what we do in the event there is no announcement. When would we drop the coverage? 7.30pm when the Evening News would usually end was considered likely.

Of course eventually the news did come at 6.30pm.