Yesterday at the age of 99, Prince Philip, ‘Phil the Greek’ died. It was not unexpected as he was clearly old, and had recently spent a significant time in hospital.
As expected there has been ‘wall-to-wall’ coverage. It has been excessive and totally in keeping with the traditional obsession with service to royalty. It has driven me made but as the same time, it seems, many others too:
BBC flooded with complaints over Prince Philip death coverage
Corporation opened dedicated complaints form on its website to deal with high volume of comments
Within six hours of Prince Philip’s death being announced the BBC had received so many complaints about its wall-to-wall coverage of the news that it opened a dedicated complaints form on its website, as television viewers turned off and went elsewhere.
The BBC curtailed dozens of broadcasts on Friday, taking the nation’s most popular television and radio channels off air and reducing dozens of other broadcasts on stations across the country, to provide uninterrupted coverage of tributes to the Queen’s husband.
BBC One played a series of pre-recorded shows, including Philip’s children paying tribute to him, while BBC Two scrapped its schedule and simulcast the same shows as its sister channel. Friday night staples such as EastEnders, Gardeners’ World, and the final episode of MasterChef were taken off air to make way for more tributes, an approach also taken by ITV.
So, to keep up the momentum I decided to make my complaint too. What particularly annoyed was the universal broadcast of I think Gyles Brandreth as a royalty history expert or maybe a documentary he made.
All of this has echos of the death of Diana when again we all had to fall into line with national mourning and a group expectation of sadness. Again tv schedules were changed and radio was replaced with nothing or dirge music.
Here is my short complaint:
I am complaining regarding the response of the BBC to the death of the Duke of Edinburgh.
With particular respect to the radio I found it inappropriate that each national radio station that i tried was broadcasting the same programme. As such there was no choice in whether I wanted to participate in the remembrance. I found it unacceptable and I would expect younger people who tuned into Radio 1 would have bemused.
The BBC is not meant to be an organ of the state and blanket coverage of the same programme and then funeral music after , an for how long, is not acceptable.
In conjunction, the over- indulgent coverage of the death on BBC television excessive for me and I am sure a significant proportion of the population who do not feel a sense of obdedience to the idea of royalty.
