"On 8 February, a riot erupted in Cairo in which 40 football fans were killed after a clash with police. At 9pm that evening I turned on Al Jazeera, to see what they were making of it. The answer was a lot, and they cleared their schedule to tell it. Having carried a major – and in retrospect, prophetic – documentary about the simmering anger among excluded Zamalek fans just two days previously, they were well placed to tell us what this event might portend." - Mark H

"Over on the BBC's dedicated news channel – formerly known as BBC News 24 – the lead item at 9pm was pensioner bonds, followed at a quick trot by reports on Prince Charles's fogeyish thoughts about Islamist militancy; on the Ukraine; on hospital trust finances; on Labour promises and Tory rejoinders; and on Tony Abbott's shaky majority in the Australian parliament (all repeats of items much repeated throughout that day). Then we joined a beaming Jane Hill on the red carpet at the Royal Opera House for a gushing 15-minute report on the BAFTA awards, after which a weather woman told us that the coming week would be "mostly dry, often cloudy"; more weather people then promised that they would be telling us what clothes we should wear. Then came a trail for Lucy Worsley's latest country-house frolic, then it was time for an "Our World" documentary repeated from the previous night. The Cairo riot did make it into the BBC's 10pm bulletin, but only after yet more repeats of the tired old repeats and in strikingly perfunctory form." - Mark H