Earthquake Hits Kent

I do love Sky sometimes. They really know how to make a crisis out of a drama or is it a drama out of a crisis.
It's all a bit boring really. I had a touch of the Elvis' for a while. At least it's given me a new topic of conversation for the day and the next week.

Impressed with the zoom on the beebs helli telli camera.

It was Maxine when I was watching.

Shock Horror. BBC South East Today, deliberately didn't opt back to network, for the national weather, a barrage of trailers we've all seen many times before, nor the continuity announcement into 'Just For Laughs'.

So they should 'extend' the bulletin.

Was the opt back to network fairly neat?

I agree, hopefully those BBC Marketing/Red Bee control freaks knew nothing of what BBC SE had planned. At the end of SET it just cut to 'Just For Laughs'.

4.3 on the Richter scale? The one that went off in Dudley in the West Midlands in 2002 was rated 5.0 on the same scale and that was felt in Wales, North Yorkshire, London, and Wiltshire.

Earthquakes are relatively "rare" in this country as we don't sit on the edge of major crustal plates and we're not along any major fault lines either like they have in San Francisco. They are natural by their means due to the way they come about therefore they can't really be blamed on global warming.

I think he was being facetious. It's good that N24 isn't totally focusing on it, b/c it is an important story, but there are other things that should be focused on.

Well I was awoken this morning (Sat) by my bed shaking back and forth as if somebody decided to use a large pneumatic drill under my household foundations. Thus said, like miss hellfire, I had a touch of the Elvis's for about just under 10 seconds and after a power outage that lasted about half an hour all was ok.

BBC Radio Kent (only station I could pick up on battery radio) were slightly delayed with their reporting on the situation even after about 300 people phoned in straight after it happened. I had to endure 20 mins of local Kent DJ, Paul James, and his Saturday Carry On before news was even announced on air. This is probably because they are based in Tunbridge Wells alongside South East Today which were unaffected by the tremor.

After power came back I switched on the TV news to Sky and BBC Breakfast (alternating both). Both managed very well considering there were no eyewitness photos or sound clips available - then again of course, it was totally sudden and unexpected. Impressed that Sky managed to pad the time with a live link to the Edinburgh Geology Station whereas BBC News 24 moved to other headlines whilst awaiting calls from eyewitnesses in the area.

South East Today did indeed have an extended bulletin at around 5.20pm that cut smoothly into titles for Just For Laughs...which was...appropriate.

Seven/SBS/the ABC are all using the same footage of a woman saying something about her kids 'bein' downstairs watchin' telly' when the earthquake hit.

They all seemed to be using the same footage from a BBC report, or indeed the whole report, which is fairly typical for smaller stories like that. In most cases (except for SBS, which is more into international news) it was just a voiceover.

I imagine Sky News Australia just used stories from the UK.

I agree it's been hyped up, just because it happened in south-east of England

When a 4.1 earthquake struck Leicestershire in Oct 2001, there was hardly any fuss- even though it was felt at the British Geological Survey's HQ at Keyworth!

Don't forget when comparing tremors and the news coverage and damage therein that the Richter scale is logarithmic!

Correlating with proximity to London and population density of southern softies of course

On a serious point, worse earthquakes happen all over the world all the time, but we rarley hear about them-- and they make the one in Kent seem tame!