If there was one thing the BBC could always be relied on to provide, it was serious, sombre coverage of national events and the Queen. Yet, apparently, no more.

Yesterday, here in the UK, there was a national two minutes’ silence to mark the first anniversary of the London bombings. This is the kind of thing the BBC would normally be excellent at. We’d have got a serious sounding announcer over a clock, telling us that we now joined BBC News, where upon we’d be greeted by a senior, authoratative news presenter in a suit, behind a desk. We’d wait for the chimes of Big Ben, be silent for two minutes whilst watching pictures of the Queen and of the country at large doing the same, and then life would continue. It would be a respectful, appropriate silence.

Yet, yesterday, the plan was to introduce the silence programme over two male dancers doing acrobatics, and then cross to a presenter best known for light-entertainment shows standing in a tent. That’s bad enough, but it’s not even what we got, as the following video shows:
[flashvideo filename=”http://sjhoward.co.uk/video/cockup.flv” /]

I’m all for making news accessible and open, but in times gone by the BBC would have just got this right. There would have been no room for cock-ups crashing into the programme, or interruptions with Cash in the Attack. This kind of thing used to be what the BBC excelled at, and just got right. Why no more?