Phil R, I'm quite sure that your professional take on the shambles that was the Thames Jubilee event is shared by one and all. I'm not sure that it was doomed from the start though, simply because:
it's just a bunch of boats floating down a river, and guess what, it isn't interesting for six hours.
I rather suspect that was the Beebs take on it and why they treated it so off handedly. Any one of the old school, Richard Dimbleby, Raymond Baxter, and a host of others would have wedded their own deep knowledge of our Nation's history, with an emphasis on Naval and Maritime events, with the scene being played out before them. They would have researched each and every vessel involved; why it was involved, where it had been, and what it had done, who were on board it and why, and how that all related to this great flotilla.
In short they would have done their job to the best of their ability.
The modern Beebs men and women did neither, mainly I suspect because they are too ignorant and uninformed too even know how to start out on such a challenge. I'm afraid I take issue with your portraying such people as being not culpable for it is their very words that always create the complaints aired here. I have no issue with the technical competence of the crews for they usually, as today, produce a superb product. It is the "voices over", alternately uttering inanities (ie borne of ignorance) or the Corporation "take" (ie propoganda). Fortunately today we were spared the "special salute" drivel of the Trooping and the commentator made sure he knew who everyone was and why they were there. We weren't spared the latter though, and it interesting that some here think that this occasion was one in which the tired old clichés should once more be trotted out. Why?
The Beeb is the British Broadcasting Corporation, not Parliament, not The Archbishop of Canterbury, or any other body we might expect to continually pronounce on what it perceives to be rights and wrongs. It is merely a broadcaster, yet we have grown so used to its editorial pronouncements, be it in OBs, documentaries, studio interviews and discussions that it has become the norm. Why?
It may well accord with some who find themselves in agreement with its pronouncements, but they should perhaps ask themselves how they would feel if they were not. Still obliged, under threat of a Criminal Record if they demure, to pay for it by direct taxation, and yet continually aggrieved by its pronouncements. If one bunch of people can take control of it, then any bunch can. It is the national broadcaster and should simply satisfy itself with being just that, to the best of its ability, and stop trying to get us all thinking in the same way as the "Chattering Classes".