BBC News 24

Although I like dipping into Sky News a few times a day, I have to admit I've not seen a Sky weather report for quite a few months now. The last time I saw one, I had serious issues telling the difference between light showers and heavy showers and general cloud cover - and the presence of fog was a mystery. The symbols for all four looked exactly the same - as Adam said, it really all just looked like the same big "lump of grey mush". Have they made any improvements to the symbols more recently?

Off topic, but worth mentioning...

I thought when the earthquake story was breaking, Julian Worricker (in for Jon Sopel) was outstanding in holding things together, and showed up Lousie Minchin's slight lacking in dealing with breaking news. I think he could be used more often, as could Tim Willcox, who is also excellent.

Bearing in mind that Julian Worricker has worked in fast-paced radio magazine news for quite a few years, it has clearly given him a good grounding for the telly presentation of Breaking News.

Can someone post a pic of Louise Minchin - I can't recall who she is?

I certainly noticed that Julian was taking a lead with Louise sitting back and watching. What the reason for this is I don't know as I'm sure Louise could have handled it. However at that stage it was purely talking to people via phone and down the wire - very much like radio, and coming from Five Live perhaps he's more used to that sort of thing.

Julian was good though.

Moz

You and I must have been thinking the same thoughts at exactly the same time. Great minds think alike...................................

James

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/39959000/jpg/_39959011_minchin_pres_203.jpg

Why they have to have these awful out of date pictures with the fake backgrounds I don't know! Why can't they just do a screen cap from the set?

Louise Minchin reminds me a bit of Chloe Sullivan from Smallville (E4 Mon, 9pm).

Aha, so that's her. I used to think that she was quite good. We don't get her here on World.

Moz- do us a favour and never apply for an editorial job on any news outlet other than a red-top tabloid. The earthquake measuring 8.7 on the Reichter scale and killing 1,000 people IS one hell of a major story- FFS even Fox News broke off regular broadcasting to cover a story- an absolute rareity for a non-US based event.

Your assertion that it would have got little coverage had it not been for the Boxing Day tsunami is nothing short of utter b*llocks...what did you make of the coverage of the Iranian earthquake on Boxing Day 2003? Oh yes, that was clearly covered as an "in brief" story wasn't it?

Your final analogy between an earthquake coverage and tabloids 'grabbing hold of every road rage story' is frankly worrying and insulting. I just can't lower myself to such depths of debate.

Bam earthquake = 26,271 deaths
Monday's earthquake = 1,000 deaths

And even the Bam earthquake didn't get a lot of coverage, despite it being on the usually news free Christmas period.

And certainly the only reason Fox were interested this time was because of the tsunami (they were probably hoping for another one knowing Fox). Anyone who believes otherwise is living a very sheltered life!

Bam coverage was rather extensive - and ESPECIALLY because it was over Christmas. The tsunami was a great exception. Look at the reports around 6 - 9 hours after "A small wave is believed to have hit the Idionesian coast" - it soon became a big story (and only got big coverage thanks to correspondents being there by chance...John Irvine for ITN on holiday there was a great example)

To describe the earthquake as nothing more than 'other world news' is rediculous - obviously the newsworthiness has passed slightly. The main concern was there could be another tsuanmi. Imagine if news networks had said "Yeh there's been an earthquake" and then thousands more people had died in a tsuanmi...it had to have the coverage JUST IN CASE.

Thankfully it didn't happen and the coverage has been scaled down appropriately. Of course the Jamie Oliver story has been a massive domestic story today, and has almost eclipsed the story, but coverage is still out there.

Still, very shocking to think that any news channel wouldn't spend time analysing just what happened in the earthquake. An earthquake anywhere would require major analysis such as how many casualties, preparedness, history, etc.

We were treated to a full frontal noise attack from the tractor cam at the TOTH at 8pm tonight

Also, earlier on the rare-ish sight of a 'Breaking News' strap over the weather forecast to inform us of Terri Schivo's death.