Prince Philip death: complaints about ‘too much coverage’

The BBC has set up a complaints page – after having being inundated with complaints about its ‘over-the-top’ coverage of Prince Philip’s death.

The wall-to-wall coverage has prompted many to call the BBC and Welsh broadcaster S4C to complain, especially bearing in mind the many thousands of people who have lost their lives to Covid-19.

The BBC has now set up a special page where listeners and viewers can lodge their complaints about ‘too much coverage’.

S4C has not set up a similar page for complaints.

In seriousness, I lost my father to Covid and have now endured a year of his death being downplayed/dismissed/ ignored/flat out denied by countless politicians and pundits

To have the same people now insist that a 100yo rich man's passing is an unbearable tragedy? It's sickening

— Dean Burnett (@garwboy) April 10, 2021

‘Sycophancy’

The coverage has also prompted calls for the public in Wales to support the campaign by Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymrag (Welsh Language Society) who have been campaigning for broadcasting to be devolved to Wales.

In a comment about our Nation.Cymru story about former Tory MP Guto Bebb being appointed as a member of the S4C board, prominent musician, Endaf Emlyn, replied on Twitter: “Mae gwir angen datganoli darlledu. Westminster should not be in control of Welsh media.”

Theatre producer Jeremy Turner tweeted “How sad, how desperate that @BBCNews, @BBCRadioCymru, @itvnews and, yes @S4C are scraping around for someone with something, anything to say about the queen of England’s husband. Such forced sycophancy diminishes any little respect people might have for him.”

The UK’s major broadcasters yesterday scrapped their schedules to bring audiences wall-to-wall coverage of Prince Philip’s death, but the output proved to be a turn-off for viewers in key evening viewing hours.

Does the BBC & ITV seriously think that people are watching this Prince Philip coverage all day & night with all the other channels available this day and age it's just bonkers.

— Geraint Parry (@ParGerai) April 9, 2021

Ratings data crunched by the news website Deadline.com shows that the BBC, ITV, and Channel 4 all suffered audience declines between the hours of 7pm and 11pm, when the broadcasters lined up special coverage of the Duke of Edinburgh’s demise.

BBC One, the UK’s most-watched television channel, lost 6% of its audience last night compared with Friday, April 2 . Sister channel BBC Two, which simulcast the BBC News channel for a good chunk of the evening, was down 65%, according to Barb figures supplied by overnights.tv.

It was a similar story elsewhere. ITV, the BBC’s main commercial rival, suffered a 60% dent to its ratings on Friday night, while Channel 4 — which broadcast a feature-length news special at 7PM — was down 8.5%.

Channel 4 did, however, largely stick to its planned schedule in the evening and was rewarded with the highest-rated show of the day in the shape of Studio Lambert’s Gogglebox, which was watched by nearly 4.2M viewers.