Nelson Mandela has become critically ill. In the event of his death, the BBC will interrupt programming and will be in rolling news coverage immediately following his death. With rolling news, there will be no breaks at 00:29:00 or 00:59:00 for several hours. The BBC plans to keep top and bottom of the hour newscasts as well as the 00:19 and 00:49 breaks during the rolling news period, but that may change if there are any important announcements, so stayed tuned to Content Depot for further messaging.    

For the Newshour rolling news broadcast period, we will communicate with you once the 00:29:00 and 00:59:00 breaks are restored so stay tuned for those updates.

At this time, BBC’s Newshour will continue with the planned live coverage from Boston and southern Russia on Monday, June 24th at 0800 EDT and 0900 EDT. The Boston bombing suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, makes his first public court appearance in July. This planned coverage will be interrupted in the event of Mandela’s death.

Nelson Mandela Additional Content: The BBC will provide two versions of the obit following the death announcement. There will be two versions of the obit by the BBC’s Alan Little. One will be 26 minutes in length and the other 1 hour in duration. This one-hour sound-rich package will cover the life and contributions of Mandela. In addition, as the news unfolds around Mandela’s death, there will be much more content being made available from the BBC and we will be sending along that information as it becomes available.

Stay tuned for further updates and please reach out to your APM Station Relations Representative if you have any questions.