BBC 1 tribute is rather odd

[meateatingveggie]

I mean obviously it's pre recorded but how did they get them to speak of her in the past tense?

The RF family will ultimately have agreed to the timing. Everyone in the family and a lot of officials and people working for the royals needed to know first. Not just the media.

There have been threads on here, where more distant relatives have announced the death of someone’s parent on social media before they even knew about it. Announcing the death of HMQ before everyone is briefed and everything is in place, is our equivalent of your niece putting your dad’s death on Facebook. Then you reading it before you have been informed gently of the death by a loving family member

Exactly. I don't know why people are taking such an issue with this.

If there wasn't a level of pre-preparation, the output following the reasonably sudden passing of the Queen would have been far more basic, in that they've not have suitably senior newsreaders available, not suitably dressed, without appropriate material to present. They'd have to show a blank 'holding page' or re-runs of something vaguely appropriate.

Plus without pre-recording the obituaries, they wouldn't be available for months realistically, because they're hardly going to be doorstepping the RF any time soon to ask them to sit down and talk fondly about her life are they? And as for Charles having the same hanky, WTF? Perhaps he has more than one that looks the same?

I work in emergency planning and we are constantly preparing for events that, in reality are unlikely to ever happen at the scale at which we prepare for. But we are required to have certain provisions in place and regularly rehearse them and its all useful because related smaller scale events do occasionally happen every few years. And when those event do happen, the public expect us to be ready, competent and suitably equipped to deal with the issue, keep them informed and as safe as possible.

If we'd ignored the something that is known will/could happen one day and then, when it did, flapped around not knowing what to do, without the resources to deal with the problem or provide any information, the public would be up in arms that we weren't prepared for the event (well a significant minority will still be completely over-reacting on social media but we'll just be quietly getting on wiht things regardless).

So the Queen's death is just the media's version of emergency planning so all the pre-preparation seems entirely normal to me. Their main 'day job' is reporting on world events and most of the time, they can just deal with things as they arise. But some events are of such significance, and will be so resource intensive, that it will be impossible to satisfactorily cover without doing some of the work in advance. So that's what they do. Nothing weird or sinister about it at all.

The RF didn't have to make the calls themselves. They have other people to do that while they grieved in private.

Very odd.

One of the reasons for the delay in announcing the Queen's death was that various members of the Royal Family were still travelling to see her. Apparently Charles and Anne were already in Scotland and got there on time but the other members arrived at Balmoral after her death. Imagine driving to see a family member only to hear on the news that the person had died. It's not 'them' keeping the news from us. It's just showing some level of sensitivity.

It's the same as the police not releasing the name of a person involved in a serious or fatal injury until the immediate family have been informed.

This thread is weird.

The obituary thing isn’t new - there’s an episode of Drop The Dead Donkey from the 90s where the storyline is based around someone having to update the obituaries and there was a whole shelf of them for various famous (at the time) people. I know that’s fiction but it was obviously based on reality.

We were told as soon as it was appropriate and when protocol dictated so all these claims about being lied to and gaslighted are just ridiculous. It’s not like it was kept secret for days or weeks before we were told, it was a matter of a few hours at most while they made sure that all the key family members had already been told. Maybe some people in the media did already know, maybe they didn’t, but I think it’s far more likely that they just put two and two together based on the language of the initial announcement, knew it had to be imminent and put the black tie on so they were ready.

It's no different from writing an obituary, IMO.

Operation London Bridge and other state funerals have been in rehearsal mode for many many years, so particularly for people working in broadcasting, they are already being primed ongoing that there could be a switch from one mode to another at a moment's notice.

Boris Johnson's comment was because when he was still PM, concern about the Queen was clearly increasing, so he struggled even more because she wasn't quite failing at that stage, but he was being asked to act as if she had already died, which must have been awful. He looked choked up yesterday doing his tribute.

No different to the newspaper Obits, they're being updated very regularly. They're bound to be updating King Charles' obit now, given his status as King. That must be weird writing about someone as if their life was already over.

Years ago I did a work placement at my regional bbc news programme.
I went out with a crew to film an item with a terminally ill young woman who was very unwell but opening a local cancer unit she had fundraised for.
Returning to the studio the reporter said how pleased he was that the filming had gone really well and they'd be adding it to her obituary. I was a bit horrified by this tbh.
But as he explained, there was a huge amount of affection for her and it would be wrong for the bbc to not have put the time and effort in by preparing a really fitting tribute to her.

Let's face it, to get an Obit into the newspapers or onto a website for a famous person with a long eventful past would take weeks of research. Far easier to update it as they go along.

Even for William and Kate's children, their obits are being catalogued since birth because of their historic status. Events such as where they're living, their schooling, their role in the Queen's Jubilee celebrations etc. Some of it will be trimmed out to make way for other more significant events as they get older.

weeks of research or more like years!

I’m surprised that people are surprised by this. Surely it’s obvious that the media would have content ready to go. It’s not as If her death was a great surprise. Seems likely they’ll have plans in place for the whole family, albeit less developed than the Queen’s.

I agree it must have felt strange to talk about the living Queen as if she were dead but that’s just one of the many ways in which the RF are required to put public duty ahead of personal feelings. And the result was that we all saw their love for her expressed in the context of a very well researched and beautifully put together programme, rather than having the BBC having to scrabble about for content and the Royals coming under pressure to make statements while they are grieving. Seems a good outcome all round.

she was 96
how long did anyone expect her to live?

@CaramelTwirl

She was 96! No lying needing, anyone could realise that this was highly likely to happen. The fact she was well enough to receive Liz Truss on Tuesday means that unlike many people the end was quick.

Her private medical matters are not for us to know

Gaslit? Some people are mad. The fact that there was a scramble to get the family there shows it was unexpected even though she’d been in decline.

When my dad was dying we knew it could be any time. When it actually happened it was quicker than we thought it would. The nurse had only just left 30 minutes before & said see you this evening. he was dead less than hour after she had left.

Operation London Bridge and other state funerals have been in rehearsal mode for many many years, The Queen would have been involved in the planning, just as many people put their own affairs in order.

I find it very strange people are upset. Johnson is an idiot for talking about it like that, he's so inappropriate, everything is about him. Don't be fucking PM if you don't want to be part of planning for the monarch's death, it is an important part of having a functioning state.

Johnson is an idiot for talking about it like that, he's so inappropriate, everything is about him

Agree with this. "I'm on the show, I'm Somebody!" Nobody needed "The Making of...".

It's just one of those television practicality things. Like celebrities pretending it's New Year's Eve when they film Hootenanny.

Operation Menai Bridge is for when Charles cops it. I wonder if, for the past few decades, the Queen occasionally had to put on sombre clothes and talk to camera about her son as if he had died, in case he predeceased her. Rest break, cup of tea, talk about Anne as if she had died, repeat...

Weird but I expect the RF get used to it. Would make for an odd family whatsapp group "lovely pics of the new puppy ! Hey the obit people were here today, I said nice things about you all so you better say nice things about me! Don't forget it's George's birthday next week, they're having a bouncy castle, I'll call in after I've snipped the ribbon on Little Bigswallop supermarket "

It’s not the advance preparation for the tributes and the state funeral which I find strange or inappropriate. Of course there have to be plans which can be rolled into action when an event of such significance as the death of a monarch, occurs.

What I found distasteful was the completely unnecessary blanket outside broadcast coverage from Balmoral/Windsor/Buckingham Palace from the minute the concern for the Queen’s health became public knowledge. Why was that considered a good idea? Maybe have a crew in those locations in readiness for an announcement, particularly at Buckingham Palace, where the announcement of the death of the Queen would be posted on the railings as tradition dictates, but what would have been wrong with interrupting normal programmes to make ‘breaking news’ announcements periodically - ‘the Queen remains comfortable/doctors are concerned/family are making their way to Balmoral’, etc? The same could have been re-iterated on the 6pm news. The news team would have known by then, with plenty of time to don a black tie for the official (media) announcement during the news. Then programmes could have been suspended and the tribute programming slotted in.

What possible benefit to anyone was the continuous broadcasting of conjecture and waffle for hours outside Balmoral and the other locations beforehand? It just smacked of a media circus, and was ill-judged, imo.

I agree @watcherintherye .

What amazes me about this thread is how many people don’t know this is a thing! It’s not just the royals, I’m sure there’s one for Attenborough and Dench and all sorts of people. They’ll definitely be one for Charles. Of course it’s daft and unnecessary and a total waste of money but the people glued to the 24 hours news complaining about the 24 hour news make me 🙄.

@CaramelTwirl do you not have an off switch?

There’s a big difference between having programmes ready prepared to roll out in the event of someone’s death and camping out on their doorstep waiting for them to die and broadcasting it. 🙄

I think the blanket coverage may well have been an attempt to 'prepare' the nation for the news. Just so it wasn't completely out of the blue.

People at the top undoubtedly knew she was gone but needed time to prepare the broadcasting. The actual presenters might not have.
I'm sure the family knew before they boarded the plane, or the other GC would also have travelled to be with Granny in her final moments.
Posters are correct the wider family and friends would need to be told first inc the great grandchildren in school, and Viscount Servern who was probably also in school. The Kents, Gloucesters, Princess Margaret's kids.

Not all of the extended family would have been told by staff. Some would have been told by senior royals