Surprising Lack of Earthquake Coverage

[emailfailed]

In the not too distant past I know L.A. news has gone overboard in their coverage of minor earthquakes, but I was surprised to see a lack of coverage immediately following Sunday evening's earthquake.

After all, this wasn't just another typical jolt, rather this was a good size earthquake that caused a little bit of damage, with an epicenter in a densely populated area felt in a wide area.

 

[ShawnHill1]

I happen to live less than two miles away from the epicenter, in Inglewood. According to what I saw on KCAL (of course, the only station doing news at the time of the quake), the center was situated near Interstate 105 between the 110 and 405 freeways, which would put it near Los Angeles Southwest College, which is in an unincoropated area of South Los Angeles near the boundaries of Hawthorne and Inglewood. I flipped around the stations right after the quake, and besides KCAL, KTLA was the only other station that had any news, and it was only on a crawl on the bottom of the screen.

I was at work almost a year or so ago when the last recent big quake it this area (which had a slightly stronger magitude than last night's), and if you remember, it happened just before noon, at least while KABC and KNBC were in the middle of their 11am newshours. We happen to have KCAL on in our lobby, and I think they stayed with coverage most of that afternoon.

 

[Robnoxious]

And the coverage we did get was 4 television copters continually circling a drapery shop in Long Beach that had *gasp!* broken storefront windows! This quake was a non event and was treated as such.

 

[Carmine5]

I too was surprised to see so few stations even acknowledging that an earthquake occurred. KTLA at least had a crawl providing viewers with the basic facts. I suppose if it had been stronger then a 4.7 they would have broken away to a live report. But the other stations were happily cranking away with their regular programming as if nothing happened.

You have to admit, though, that at some point the live in-studio coverage can become ridiculous and reaching as anchors run out of gas as to what to say while waiting for field reporters to scramble out to locations where any damage occurred.

The low point was KCAL's call-ins from those who felt the quake. "I was sitting on my couch eating Cheetos, the red kind not the regular kind, when all of a sudden..." Where's my remote, I'm going back to James Bond.

At least KCAL was able to get a seismologist ASAP to help us make sense of it all. Too bad he wasn't very coherent. Where was Dr. Lucy Jones when we needed her?

But I think, for many stations, this was a wake up call for developing a better strategy for informing the public in times of disaster. Most of the stations appeared to be blinded sided by the quake.

C5

 

[RicoGregg]

If there was a surprising lack of earthquake coverage, it was because there was a surprising lack of an earthquake.

Are Qwisp and/or Quake cereals still around?

In all actuality, if the quake had gotten the coverage that it truly deserved, the stations would have to cut back on their coverage of American Idol and Dancing With The Stars.

Why are these shows news events? ??? Looks like local TV news departments have prostituted themselves completely to their respective parent companies' Entertainment Divisions. At least they don't have to worry about sitting down - their own butts are up in the air from all the bending over that they do.

 

[justpassingthough]

I also noticed the surprising lack of coverage, then realized that many of the networks were airing season finales at the time. I guess in this age of a million news sources, the locals didn't feel compelled to break with season enders in a sweeps period to cover a minor quake.