Far from the biggest and best funeral evah: David Smith @ The Guardian.

I watched parts of it live and I agree. It was sad and not in a good way. I cringed at things like the disorganization, very poor sound, video feed that didn't make much sense, the crowd seeming not interested in the program at all, and at times, the MC acting like an angry schoolteacher not in control of the class. It was not all up to Mandela's dignity and he wasn't really reflected at all. (Saw the MC break into the middle of the Indian PM's speech for a lengthy lecture to the crowd about behaving and having discipline, including having them chant some things, for longer than 5 minutes, while the Indian PM just stood there waiting at the podium for him to get the class under control.)

I did switch back and forth from BBC to CNN to CSPAN. It was clear that the anchors on the two former were trying to make the boring confusing disorganized straight feed on CSPAN into something more interesting by talking instead of showing what was wasn't going on.

What one could see of the dignitaries showed them arriving late because of traffic, and then either basically ignoring the whole thing to schmooze, zoning out, and leaving before it was over. Mandela's family was shown often zoning out. A lot of the crowd left early, too. The music was not at all what I expected, mostly seemed very amateur and/or unrehearsed, and again, disorganized.