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London (pte018/25.02.2005/12:45) - British broadcasters Sky News http://www.sky.com/skynews/home and the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk spent more than 1 million pounds apiece extra to cover the Asian tsunami in the weeks after Christmas, it was revealed today. As the Media Guardian http://www.mediaguardian.co.uk reports, the head of Sky News had to get the BskyB chief executive, James Murdoch, to sign off extra cash, which is thought to be "considerably north of 1 million pounds", to fund the broadcaster's widely praised coverage of the Asian tsunami disaster. According to Nick Pollard, the tsunami coverage had not been funded out of Sky News' budget, but from extra cash, which Rupert Murdoch and the Sky Networks managing director, Dawn Airey, had to clear.
The broadcaster had five presenters on location in Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia and sent a total of 60 staff to Asia to cover the tsunami story. "The first priority was to get things going, to send out the first teams. We eventually sent 10 different teams in a rolling operation. I rang Dawn probably two or three days later and said 'This is what it looks like financially at the moment, and this is what it looks like it's going to be'. So effectively there was a rolling sign-off," said Pollard. "We spent what it took, considerably north of 1 million pounds. We got a supplementary budget. It certainly ended up on James Murdoch's desk." According to Pollard, Sky News had received additional funding, in addition to its annual budget, for previous big rolling stories including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As the Media Guardian reports, the BBC also spent more than 1 million pounds on its tsunami coverage, which included sending up to 70 extra staff out to Asia to support the journalists already based in the area, a spokesman confirmed. BBC News is believed to have paid for the operation from its own emergency fund.
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