10November1996

Sunday 10 November
My dear folks,

I ought to have been working today but a colleague begged me earlier in the week to swap a day with her. I didn’t much feel like it at the time, but agreed as my own life revolves around such exchanges. Now, I’m rather pleased I did. It’s a grey day after a night of rain. The pavements are green with a ragged mat of leaves. After a late night (watching a TV film) I had an equally late morning, lying half-awake, half- listening to news bulletins until Mavis eventually hopped on the bed for a cuddle. He’d failed to respond to my 2 a.m. whistles as happens not infrequently. Stef has keys to my front door & must have let him in. Although he was damp in places he clearly hadn’t spent the night outside. I nipped out to get some rolls for breakfast & with a second cup of coffee now inside me, I’m in a state to sit down & say hello.

As I drove home last night, it occurred to me that my SA trip is just around the corner. In fact, this time next week, I shall be packing my bags. I’ve the BBC OnLine trial Tues followed by day-shifts Thurs/Fri. Speaking of OnLine, we were earlier following up the (ex Kennedy aide) Pierre Salinger allegations about a US navy missile bringing down the TWA jumbo, interviewing him & others as well as later crossing to the hastily-arranged FBI presser rubbishing them. He’d referred to “documents” on the Internet & the current affairs team was impressed when a quick search I did revealed not only “documents” but the contact names & no’s of a US paper which had followed the story. They then interviewed one of the journalists concerned. We’re gradually making more use of the Internet in our own work. It’s clearly just a matter of time before TV & computer journalism merge. Already, there are TV sets on sale that can transmit both TV programmes & Web pages.

Through the glass partition that separates our newsroom from the score of computer programmers next door, we can see them hard at work setting up the OnLine Web pages. We don’t know exactly what’s planned - I’ll learn more on Tuesday - but it was certainly hoped to offer pictures & audio of people/events. The big question was how to make it pay. That’s one that virtually everybody is still struggling with. We note that CNN, our big rivals, often advertise their Web pages as an alternative source of information. Our bosses frequently sit down to compare our programming with theirs & other competitors. They’ve vastly more money that we have & generally run a pretty slick operation. But not always. There were shrieks in our newsroom yest. when CNN played 2 wrong tapes in succession. But I do not gloat. It’s so easy.

I had my own mini-crisis yest. when most of the team had gone to lunch on a deadly quiet Sat. & news broke, just before I had to put out a bulletin, of a mob attack on the Burmese opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. It was too late to change the headlines on the computer &, just seconds from transmission, I was barking instructions to the presenter. Then we reached our correspondent in the region on the phone for a detailed account. The story threw out all my timings - on a bulletin that has to end exactly on time. It meant a flurry of throwing out other stories or cutting them back. We had several guests in the gallery who were clearly impressed by the action; as the director commented afterwards, they got their money’s worth.

Sorry, that’s rather a lot of TV, but my life has been rather full of it. Thank you Jones for your update faxes. There’s a huge black cloud out in the Atlantic which seems set to arrive over Portugal on Tuesday - so expect rain. ....... .xxxx....
T