BBC-2 made a special announcement of the news of his death at 9.30 p.m. BBC-1 waited until the end of the play at 10 p.m. ITV paid an unprecedented tribute to a respected competitor by interrupting programmes for two minutes. The entire ‘24 Hours’ programme at 10.15 p.m. became a television obituary in which many tributes were paid, including this from the Controller of Television Programmes, Huw Wheldon:
Richard Dimbleby was irreplaceable as far as we are concerned here. It is not simply that he was the supreme professional that people saw. The reason producers liked to have him handling their programmes was that you knew that the preparation would be absolutely meticulous, you knew that in the event he would be totally imperturbable and, no matter what had happened, the situation would be good-humoured and you would be looking forward to tomorrow and other days. But I have always felt that the word “professional” was used too easily about him, because he was something bigger than simply a very, very professional man. He had a quality which I can only call dignity. He died with dignity, as he lived and worked with dignity.
And over and above both professionalism and dignity, he had the gift, which is very rare, not simply of brilliantly finding the apt phrase and the graceful sentence, but, when called upon to do it, of being able to speak on your behalf and mine. He was the voice of the BBC on thousands of occasions, and on hundreds occasions I think he was even the voice of the nation. To an extent I think incomparable in the history of radio or television so far as this country is concerned, he was the voice of our generation, and probably the most telling voice on BBC radio or television of any kind in this country so far. It is in that sense I feel he is irreplaceable, and what can we do except mourn him?