Coverage on BBC will span six hours
THE BBC is to mark the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh with a series of special programmes.
Huw Edwards will lead nearly six hours of coverage broadcast from Windsor across three programmes on Friday and Saturday.
Earlier this week, The Sun reported that the BBC had received more than 100,000 complaints about its coverage of Philip’s death after it cleared its schedules to cover the story.
This evening on BBC One, Edwards will present HRH The Duke of Edinburgh Remembered live from Windsor Castle at 7pm, where he will interview people set to play a key role in the funeral service and ceremonial procession.
Tomorrow, the day of the funeral, Edwards will present live coverage of the events at Windsor from 12.30pm.
He will be joined by broadcaster Sophie Raworth and TV presenter and former Royal Marine JJ Chalmers throughout the afternoon.
Tomorrow evening from 8.10pm, Edwards will then reflect on the day’s events at Windsor Castle.
There will also be coverage of the funeral on Saturday from 2pm to 4.10pm on Radio 4 and Radio 5 Live, as well as on the broadcaster’s local stations.
ITV News previously announced it would cover the funeral tomorrow with Prince Philip – A Royal Funeral, which will be presented by Tom Bradby and Julie Etchingham from Windsor.
Following the duke’s death last week, the BBC cleared its schedules across both BBC One and BBC Two to run a series of mirrored special programmes.
The coverage also took over the news channel and BBC radio stations.
Viewers tuning into BBC Four were greeted with a message urging them to switch over for a “major news report” while BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 5 Live also aired programmes about the duke.
The rolling news coverage meant the final of MasterChef was postponed.
The broadcaster set up a dedicated webpage for viewers to lodge their dissatisfaction.