We responded to the messages that we were receiving from the public, which overwhelmingly wanted us to err on the side of the mourning that was going on. “We were led by the public mood which was a complete surprise to us. Whereas now we’re talking about the death of a 99-year-old man, which is very sad, but not unexpected and not shocking in the same way. We had in 1997 the death of a 36-year-old woman in a car crash coming completely out of the blue in the middle of the night. Matthew Bannister, who was controller of BBC radio in 1997, told the Observer: “It was an extremely difficult and extremely different set of circumstances. Although the BBC’s reach among the UK population remains enormous, the growth of Netflix and YouTube means audiences have somewhere else to turn. When Diana, Princess of Wales died in a car crash in 1997, most of the UK population had only just gained access to a fifth television channel. Le Monde’s Philippe Bernard said Philip could have been known as “Prince of Blunders” for his “offbeat marks of affection, manifestations of British humour or frankly inappropriate or even stupid remarks”.Īlthough the BBC is used to finding itself in the middle of Britain’s culture wars, its handling of Philip’s death points to a deeper issue over the ability of a national broadcaster to force the country together to mourn a single individual in an era where audiences are fragmented and less deferential. Newspapers in the Caribbean were more concerned with the eruption of La Soufrière volcano in St Vincent, but Trinidad’s Saturday Express found space for a small picture of the duke on its front page.īeyond the Commonwealth, news of the duke’s death was covered on many front pages in Europe and the United States. In Kenya, the Daily Nation used black-and-white pictures of Philip in naval uniform while visiting the country. News stories focused on the duke’s relationship with his uncle, Lord Mountbatten, the last viceroy who oversaw Indian independence and partition. News of Philip’s death was less noticeable in India, where the Times of India and the Hindustan Times carried small pictures beside the papers’ mastheads. But The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald newspapers kept most of their normal coverage, with pictures of the duke on their front pages.
Outside the UK and in many commonwealth countries, the duke’s death was treated as a foreign affair with most focusing on British reaction to the news, although in Australia and New Zealand broadcasters and newspapers gave substantial coverage to the death of their monarch’s consort.ĪBC, Australia’s state-owned broadcaster, broke into its regular programming with presenters wearing black. The BBC would not say how many complaints it had received or make any other comment about its coverage. On CBBC, children were greeted with a banner encouraging them to watch the news. It had been due to show the England women’s football team play France in an international friendly – the game aired on the BBC’s iPlayer service and BBC Sport website, apparently in the belief that showing women’s sport online is more respectful than allowing it on linear television channels. Even the live blog was shut down.īBC Four was taken off air and replaced with a notice urging viewers to switch to BBC One. Some BBC radio cricket commentary teams continued to provide coverage of county cricket – one of Philip’s favourite pastimes – unaware that no one was able to hear them. The BBC’s national radio stations replaced their output with a pre-recorded tribute, with some later returning to special “sombre” music: Radio 1 played downbeat music interspersed with announcements that it would “sound a bit different”. The highest rated programme on Friday, with 4.2m viewers, was Gogglebox on Channel 4. ITV suffered a similar drop after it ditched its Friday night schedule to broadcast tributes to the duke. For BBC Two the decision was disastrous – it lost two-thirds of its audience, with only an average of 340,000 people tuning in at any time between 7pm and 11pm. BBC One, which is traditionally the channel that Britons turn on at moments of national significance, was down 6% on the previous week, according to analysis of viewing figures by Deadline.