Hull Daily Mail columnist Ian Midgley asks why the flooding of East Yorkshire scarcely concerned national news programmers. Would establishing a new BBC North restore the confidence of licence fee payers?
I'm going to predict the news for the next three days. Tomorrow, aliens will land in Queen Victoria Square, making first contact and requesting to meet our leaders. Councillor Steve Brady accepts and is immediately whisked away to the planet Alpha Centuri for intergalactic treaty talks.
On Friday, the lost city of Atlantis will rise out of the Humber Estuary and, irked by the dreadful fantasy serial currently propping up Saturday night TV schedules, declare war on Hessle. Patrick Duffy is nowhere to be seen.
Saturday's a quiet one. After 72 years lost, Amy Johnson's plane reappears out of the mist, and she looks not a day older than when she disappeared. She has no memory of the past seven decades.
And here is what the national BBC news will report on those days. Tomorrow. Nelson Mandela's still dead. Lots of people are paying tribute to him. Robert Mugabe is rubbing shoulders with Barack Obama.
Friday. Someone from London was slightly injured when they fell off their bike on the Old Kent Road. First aid was administered at the scene. Saturday. Someone political wonk from Islington says something rude about another political wonk from Islington. There is a slight snowfall somewhere in Kent and everyone panics that the world is about to end.
Now don't get me wrong. I know the BBC is an international broadcaster. It sometimes has to take the long, global view on stories of international importance. And yes, Nelson Mandela was a towering figure of our age, who deserves to be lauded to the rafters and whose passing should be marked with dignity and in detail.
But when you're sitting at home, reading on Twitter and Facebook that much of the East Coast is being threatened by the worst tidal flooding in 60 years you'd think our national broadcaster would raise its London-centric eye from the capital for once and try to reflect the rest of the nation. Or could it just not be arsed to feign interest because it didn't happen within the M25 area?
When thousands of people – and let's not forget licence fee payers – are facing tides last seen by the likes of Noah threatening their homes, business and even lives do you not think dear old Aunty should take a passing interest?
But no, flicking through the extended 10pm national news bulletins and 24-hour news channels there was ne'er a mention of the calamity Hull and places like it were facing. Instead, we were repeated to endless droning eulogies to Mr Mandela and the same archive footage over and over again.
Well done BBC, your editorial judgment sucks. You really need to pull your head out of your journalistic backside and realise civilisation does not end at Watford.
I'll make an important distinction here. The local BBC and its rolling coverage of the floods were excellent. I know they're sort of the competition but, credit where credit's due, presenters James Hoggarth, Andy Comfort and co were both spot on in their live reporting and updating of the rapidly developing situation. As were the Mail's team of roving reporters.
I haven't got a beef with Radio Humberside. It's the snooty national lot who were so desperate to jump on the back of something they thought was of historic importance that they completely forgot, or simply didn't care, what their audience actually wanted or, more importantly, needed.
Can you imagine the wall-to-wall coverage such a story would have received if London had been flooded?
They would have had Kate Adie out in a flak jacket and Michael Buerk in a dinghy doing his biblical catastrophe thing all night.
And then, to add insult to injury, the muppets go and cancel Ripper Street, which is currently the best thing on the box.
Well, of course it's going to struggle for ratings if you put it up against I'm A Celebrity, what do you expect? That's still no reason to bin what is effectively the best-crafted drama currently on TV. There is nothing quite like watching a Victorian copper beating up a villain to get a confession.
And they wonder why people go on about chopping the licence fee? Maybe they should give half of it to a newly established BBC North – then we might get the coverage and service we deserve.
