I wasn’t in London on Sunday for the Thames Pageant to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Instead I was at home with the family. We were having a challenging day — both children (we’ve got 2 under 2) were a bit under the weather. Not exactly ill, but not in full spirits.
And that’s a difficult situation. You can’t easily take them out to entertain them, you can’t do the normal things you might do.
Which meant I got the opportunity to glance, now and again, at the Jubilee Pageant coverage on both the BBC and Sky News — when our eldest wasn’t insisting on watching the extensive archive of Postman Pat episodes we’ve ‘Skyplussed’. To be fair, when there were soldiers on screen marching about, Archie was pretty impressed. But he didn’t have much time for boats.
If I have to watch live TV, I tend to focus around Sky News or BBC World. I always tend to enjoy Sky News often because they do editorialise a little which I often find mildly entertaining.
I did switch over to the BBC during the day on Sunday to see what they were making of the Thames Pageant. But goodness me, they were having a wretched time. The weather can’t have helped and in fairness, the rain was pouring down in buckets for most of the afternoon. However whenever I arrived at BBC1, I couldn’t help but wonder whose “Hi8” Sony video camera from 1996 they were using to film the whole thing.
The picture quality was abysmal.
I didn’t watch long enough to be wound up by the rest the BBC’s coverage. According to The Telegraph, quite a few folk were not impressed by the actual programming of the coverage. I didn’t watch long enough to give it much consideration.
Sky News on the other hand did a super job. They have a fantastic fellow they use for commentating on Royal occasions — I’m afraid I can’t remember his name — however he was on hand for most of their live coverage to offer up continual Royal and military-related nuggets of information. That comes in very useful when everyone is waiting for something to happen. The rest of the Sky News team were all present, getting soaked along with the crowds.
Poor show BBC. I’m sure they’ll sort it out for the Olympics. Nice work Sky News!
