How is a special operation like the funeral of the Queen of England prepared on franceinfo? What are the behind the scenes and the implementation of this special edition? Franceinfo teams are mobilized in the field for numerous special operations throughout the year.
To discuss the coverage for our media of the funeral of Elizabeth II – London Bridge operation – Emmanuelle Daviet, mediator of Radio France antennas, receives Samuel Aslanoff, in charge of external operations, at franceinfo.
Emmanuelle Daviet: When you listen to the antenna in special edition, everything seems to go without saying. It’s fluid, but behind the scenes, it’s not that simple. Where were you when you learned that the Queen’s health had deteriorated?
Samuel Aslanoff: I was in the car with a franceinfo team on the way to Ukraine, because we had planned, three days later, to do a special day live from kyiv, on the occasion of the 200 days of war, to discuss the daily Ukrainians. And there, we learn that Queen Elizabeth is very badly. A phone call from the director of franceinfo explains to me that the special operation in kyiv has been cancelled, and that we have to divert the team to London.
So the choice is made very quickly?
It’s done very quickly and above all, what you have to do very quickly is find the plane tickets simply to go to Warsaw/London. Unfortunately, there are no tickets right now. We can’t leave until the next day, so we have to find hotel rooms in Warsaw, and then in London. All of this is behind-the-scenes work carried out by extraordinary people at franceinfo.
And how do we organize ourselves logistically, once we are in London?
So once we’re in London, we arrive in the taxi very quickly, since we have a show that will last 3 hours and which starts 4 hours later. I am lucky, and we were lucky, to have already rehearsed a little since there was the Queen’s Jubilee a few months before. And I was in London to do a special operation already, so I know where I’m going, we’re going to go close to Buckingham. We know that we can transmit because obviously, if we cannot transmit, it is useless. We have technicians with us who are also outstanding professionals, and we are in one place. And there, we begin to ask who we are going to interview.
We have a programmer who begins to call her contacts in London to bring in a journalist, a Frenchwoman who has lived in London for 30 years, and whose private life is linked to that of Elizabeth II. And then also a former member of the London Foreign Service, Lord Peter Rickettswho knew and met the Queen.
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However, this is not a surprise. Did you anticipate the announcement of Queen Elizabeth’s death?
Obviously, like all newsrooms, we anticipate. I had myself participated in a document to say what we could do as soon as the queen was going to die. I had also done a whole lot of archival research work, because radio is also about sound, and therefore finding the sound of Elizabeth II, her great speeches, she doesn’t do a lot of them, but She did make a few though. And then also when she speaks French, to let listeners hear her accent.
As of Friday, we say to ourselves that there have already been a lot of things done on the queen, since she died on Thursday evening. We have to start talking about King Charles and the first question, we say to ourselves but in fact, we say how Charles: “Charles Three”, Charles the Third”? The reporter will then ask the question directly to Londoners, because what is interesting if we are in London, it is that we are at the heart of what is happening, at the place where it is happening. And finally, she makes a sound with the Londoners who explain to us that we say: Charles the Third.
Would you say that a special edition is both craftsmanship, a form of improvisation, high technology and also, of course, know-how?
It’s know-how, it’s high technology, because you also need devices that transmit radio, once again with technicians who do a remarkable job. And then it’s sometimes craftsmanship, because in fact, we also have to let ourselves be taken in by what is happening around us. Me, I really like special operations when we’re in the field, because our role as reporters is also to see things, and what we see in the field at a given time, we also have to we can pick it up and put it on the radio and let others hear it.
We are a media, we are between people, between what is happening on the ground and then the listeners. And that’s where there’s a bit of craftsmanship. An anecdote: we were at one point in Edinburgh, we were waiting for the passage of the queen’s coffin and there, I heard the sound of bagpipes. It was the bagpipes being played 300 yards away, by the guard accompanying the queen. This bagpipe sound, where did it come from? It came out of a smartphone belonging to my neighbor, a Scottish woman who was watching TV. And so I brought the microphone closer to take this bagpipe sound, to accompany this moment, and to once again make it heard to the listeners. There, we were really in the craft.
You told us that last Monday, you had to do a special day live from kyiv with the Ukrainians. When will this day finally take place? Because what listeners tell us in their mail is: “Don’t Forget Ukraine”.
We don’t have the date yet, but what is certain is that we will. I also promised it to the interlocutors we have in Ukraine. They don’t want to be forgotten. We don’t forget them either.