No cameras please, we’re British. Are Prince Charles and wife Camilla playing a little hard to get? The VRC has emailed around this stern warning that the Royal couple are not to be filmed by any TV network during their appearance at the Melbourne Cup today — the exception is the Seven Network, which can go for broke because it owns the exclusive TV rights.

As for the other networks which may dare to seek to cover the race that stops the nation, “no live coverage is permitted of any vision”. When it comes to the Royals, no filming is permitted at all at any time, except for “as the Royals leave the Racecourse”. Seven will make some footage available to other networks. To be fair to the Royal couple, this is not their call — it’s a media rights issue, and just the latest in a series of increasingly restrictive rules and regulations cramping what the media can do.

ABC holiday watch. Four Corners wrapped up its 2012 season last night with another brutally graphic Sarah Ferguson expose on the live cattle trade. That means the nation’s highest-quality current affairs program will be off-air for a full three months. The languorous holidays at Aunty have been a long-time bugbear in the Crikey bunker, even though — hold the emails, ABC hacks! — we know the show’s meagre budget isn’t the journos’ fault.

Luckily, we can thank the lord, aka Mark Scott, for some small mercies. Q&A and Media Watch are hanging around for three weeks longer than in 2011. Both shows will be on air until November 27 (though they get a week off next week to run a drama about Bernie Banton’s fight against James Hardie).

McCabe on the news cycle. Seems The Australian Women’s Weekly editor Helen McCabe hasn’t lost her hard news edge, honed from years at News Limited. A few months back AWW scored an exclusive interview with Paul Howes and his now-ex wife Lucy. After news broke yesterday that Howes was now dating Qantas spinner Olivia Wirth, the original profile was rejigged with a paragraph explaining the break-up and splashed across the AWW website.

Video of the day. One polling expert tells The New York Times that “probably millions” of votes have been lost due to irregularities in US presidential elections over the years. This video looks at the weird and wacky ballots across different jurisdictions …

Front page of the day. It’s all about Ohio. In the capital, Columbus, the local daily knows where the candidates’ hearts are 24 hours out from election day …