Since I get my news online, I have managed to avoid coverage of the non-news of Queen Elizabeth’s funeral. My morning routine is to listen to the news headlines on NPR and the news program Morning Edition while I prepare and have my breakfast. I listen online instead of on the radio and yesterday (Monday) when I scanned the show’s website, I found that 16 out of the 20 items were about the funeral. Only one item, lasting about three minutes in the two-hour program, dealt with hurricane Fiona that was hitting Puerto Rico hard, dumping a lot of rain, cutting off all power to the island, and causing catastrophic damage.
So I listened to a podcast of This American Life instead.
If this is the amount of coverage that was given in an American news program, one can only imagine what it must have been like in the UK. Guardian columnist Zoe Williams writes that the programming was so tedious that she did something that she almost never does, and that is turn off the radio.
There was no final straw or particular anti-royal sentiment. I have nothing against fervent monarchism, sincerely expressed: it was merely the sound of people aping royalism, the performative respect, above all the repetitiveness. It’s such a fundamental principle of broadcasting, that whatever you say, you can’t say it twice.
…Six days ago, I gave it one more chance, only to find Today programme presenters trying to amp up the nation’s solemnity by talking more slowly. Honestly, the insult: we have to hear the same thing an apparently infinite number of times, but now it’s going to take much longer.
Here are the downsides: without Thought for the Day, there’s no longer a cue to have a shower, so my personal hygiene has taken a hit; I have no clue what has happened in the sports; I don’t even know if sports are still occurring; I don’t know what the weather is like elsewhere in the country. I’ve been going to Twitter for the news, so US politics has undue prominence but at least the climate crisis is at the centre of everything.
I am sure I am not the only one to be relieved that we can get back to covering real news.
It has been dire, truly tedious as they rolled out the plans they have been forming for some time. A complete turn off.
I guess Zoe hasn’t heard of the BBC online sports pages. And there’s something called the weather network.
The saturation coverage is certainly ridicule-worthy, but Williams is just being silly.
I guess her (and others’) point is that they want their regular news sources to get back to normal. WAAAH! If you’re an adult and didn’t know, with utter certainty, that this would happen, the problem isn’t just the media.
I never realized that ‘God Save the Queen’ was given new lyrics by snarky Americans, and every schoolchild knows this version.
My country, Tis of thee
Sweet land of liberty
Of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died
Land of the pilgrims pride
From every mountainside,
Let freedom ring.
I have to agree with Rob Grigjanis @3: all the national TV news originating in the US was boring until a couple of days ago; but I usually watch an English-language telecast from DWNews which my local PBS affiliate broadcasts on the World channel, so at least I knew what was happening in Germany and Ukraine; my local TV news never really shut up about the leads that bleed, also not worth my time, but at least they always had a segment that was pretty good about predicting the weather; and mlb.com always kept me well aware of how the St. Louis Cardinals were doing. 😎
And for the last few days, even the national TV news would cover the hurricane hitting Puerto Rico and the two red-state governors, forever stuck in the terrible twos, sending prospective immigrants to blue states without telling anyone it was happening.
I expect to be getting back to normal any day now.
Mourning Edition, then?
That is all.
@Rob Grigjanis: Zoe Williams writes wryly satirical pieces.
Do you really think we Brits time our showers to avoid tedious radio programmes? Or that, were she interested in sports, she *really* couldn’t have found out “what has happened in the sports”?
Believe me, the coverage here in the UK has been tedious. The small part I failed to avoid was like watching a shopping channel where the presenter spends an hour extoling the virtues of a cheap ball-point pen.
The main broadcasters in the UK, especialy the BBC, would have been shredded by right wing media had it not transmitted the round the clock hagiography it did.
In the news: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62948148
markp8703 @7:
Yes, I know that’s her intent. She’s just not very good at it.
Correction: I suspected that was her intent. But the fact that her drivel was classified as ‘opinion’ made her fair game. Maybe she was just too subtle for someone born and raised in Yorkshire.
@4 Tethys,
I know it’s off topic, but have you heard this version:
King George he had a date
He stayed out very late
He was the King
He stayed out after four
Queen Mary paced the floor
She met him at the door…
God save the King!
I heard my parents singing it when I was a child, even though we were good Americans.
I think they got it from a 1950’s variety show.
@4 Tethys:
Like there’s not already a hundred different versions of the lyrics. 🙂
Rob:
So you blame (in part) those who didn’t have utter certainty? For doing what?
I do happen to know that most of what passes for journalism is unhinged garbage. How much varies slightly from day to day of course. But if I weren’t utterly certain, would it be your problem? Or whose? And to repeat, what exactly is “the problem” here? (Definitely not monarchism anymore, since you had to find something else.)
Shouldn’t you, a full-grown adult, be utterly certain that at least somebody out there will be at least mildly surprised by this crap? And if you weren’t, who gets to complain about that? You again?
markp8703 @7: Odd that Mano seemed to take Williams’ article at face value, but you didn’t deem it necessary to point out the “wry satire” until my comment.
cr @13:
Erm, for not noticing the coverage of the royals, in the UK, US and elsewhere, for the last few decades? And for acting as though the coverage is a huge surprise. “Can you believe this? This is ridiculous!!”. Yes, it’s ridiculous. And anyone who’s not a total idiot could have wondered, some time in the last few decades “Hm, I wonder what will happen when Liz snuffs it”.
Yeah, I should cut some slack for those who have been living in caves without access to any media for the last few decades. My bad. For those who disingenuously trot out shock and surprise? Not so much.
“for not noticing the coverage of the royals, in the UK, US and elsewhere…”
I say that as someone who has studiously tried to avoid coverage of the Windsors.
Rob, indeed.
cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_London_Bridge
—
In passing, those of us who are older went through this sort of thing when Diana (Princess!) perished. It happens.
Rob @#14,
I was well aware that Williams was indulging in a form of hyperbolic writing for the purpose of humor, for the reasons markp8703@#7 gives. I did not feel the need to point it out because the idea of not showering because she did not get her cue from the radio was obviously farcical. But the point of the hyperbole was to emphasize that the coverage was excessive and tedious
Mano, arguably, even the meta-commentary you here provide about the coverage itself becomes part of the coverage.
🙂
@ 17 John Morales
No, you didn’t. As over the top as that was it had a) the soap opera aspect of marital strife and her being with her lover at the time, b) the shock of a fatal car accident leaving two young children. This is the entirely unremarkable death of very elderly person. The comparison is fatuous -- there’s not even any similarities except both being ‘royals’. And there was never anything so over the top as declaring a public holiday.
Silentbob, I see you are easing up on me. Not so personal and insulting this time. Well done!
Yeah, I did.
Mind you, there was one difference — Princess Di kept getting coverage and displacing actual news (she liked toe-sucking stuff).
So, you think there’s similarity.
Just not enough for you.
Is not the topic at hand the “funeral coverage”?
You know, what the media publish?
@ 4 Tethys, 11 flex
This is an actual verse of “God Save the King/Queen“, not a parody; the rarely (for some reason) sung second verse:
I think the kids call this saying the quiet part out loud.
John Cleese is on a last-time-to-see-me-alive tour. Since he is such a good funeral speaker, he plans to speak also in his own. He records comments on what he really thought about some people, who are then invited to his funeral to see them.
We’ll see soon if Liz had the same idea.
Yeah, John Cleese. A relic.
(cf. https://www.google.com/search?q=john+cleese+anti+woke)
Pace Markp8703, I don’t think this idea is as farcical as all that. For a significant portion of my life (late 20s/early 30s), my mornings (and sometimes whole days) were entirely soundtracked by BBC Radio 4. One of the things that recommends it is the absolutely rigid structure -- the pips on the hour, the news, an interview, sport just before the half hour, the break at about ten to eight for “Thought for the Day”, the 8:10 interview, the fluff stories interleaving the serious news, the trailers for other shows. I’d wake to the pips, I’d rise to the weather, and Thought for the Day starting was the cue to the leave the house. Every. Single. Day. For years. I’m pretty certain that if, during that time, the Today programme producers had for some reason moved TftD to 08:45 I’d have been late for work.
Another observation: who watches terrestrial broadcast television live these days? More to the point, who has this as their only visual media option? Certainly nobody I know, not even my parents who are late seventies/early eighties. Every single person I’ve talked to about this has ready access to on-demand streaming services, and most use those services to the almost complete exclusion of whatever the programme planners have cued up right this minute.
I could understand complaints if this was the 80s or something, and there was literally no other way of getting anything on the telly that didn’t involve pulling a VHS tape off the shelf, but ffs grow up and watch something else if you’re not interested. Newsflash -- there are whole channels that show nothing else but shopping, all day, every day. I have never felt the need to complain about them because I never watch them.
The mainstream channels have, for a comparatively short time, turned into a similar entertainment desert. They have done so in response to the death of the longest serving head of state in the UK’s history. If you’re interested, tuck in. If you’re not -- other entertainment and news options are available. Quite apart from anything else, complaining about this while the funeral is going on seems ludicrous. “When will it end?” moan the morons. “Er… probably shortly after she’s in the ground?” comes the response from the sensible (it seems) minority. There really is only one thing worse than the blanket coverage, and that’s the bleating about the blanket coverage from people who don’t seem to realise that it’s possible to simply pull back the blanket.
[jocularity]
“funeral coverage” vs “funereal coverage”.
Different things.
btw, I’m looking forward to the predictable complaints of all the usual
suspectsfuckwits some time next year when we have a coronation.Silentbob @22: I see nothing wrong with that verse. Do you want enemies to prosper?
More problematic for our Scottish friends was a verse added to address the Jacobite problem;
To which the Jacobites responded with;
Feckie = Frederick, son of George.
sonofrojblake @28: I’ll be tuning in for Zadok the Priest. Nonsense, but glorious nonsense and bloody good music, dammit. Some folk just can’t Handel it.
Rob Grigjanis @ 30 I’ll be tuning in for Zadok the Priest.
Me too -- when Brenda died I said “Ooh, at least I’ll get to hear Zadoc again!”
Nonsense, but glorious nonsense and bloody good music, dammit.
Hear, hear.
Some folk just can’t Handel it.
You should be utterly ashamed of that!