Friday, September 09, 2011

9/11 How Sandra Sully presented the news in Australia, and how we got it at all


Click on the picture to see Sandra Sully present an unexpected edition of Ten News on the night and her recollections of the night. (You'll have to watch a 15 second ad first.)

Sandra says CNN was the only organisation feeding it live internationally as it happened.

Here's why.

An executive called Paul Cutler was in the control room of CNN International as the attacks happened supervising CNN's multiple outputs - different programs go to different regions, CNN Asia etc.

Someone pointed out the US presenters had cut to traffic camera vision of smoke coming out of the World Trade Centre building. At that stage no-one knew what it was or whether international viewers would be interested.

Paul uttered three words: "Go All Regions"

Instantly every CNN outlet worldwide switched to the New York vision being fed to the US via Atlanta.

Were it not for Paul... Sandra would have seen nothing.

These days he is head of News at SBS TV in Australia, where he told me the story.


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