Something getting blanket coverage in the media today is last nights earthquake. Whilst it was really very small in terms of damage, and thankfully a minimal number of injuries, it’s a rare occurrence here in the UK and quite exciting.

At around three minutes to midnight I was listening to BBC Radio Suffolk in bed just before the switch into Up All Night on Five Live. I felt the shaking - and thought it might just be a HGV, although it was a little long for that, and very quiet outside. In the first minute of the programme, the host asked the others in the studio if they just felt the earth move. They hadn’t, but within minutes over 50 text messages had been sent and after the news it became very clear that it was some sort of earthquake or tremor.

The programme continued with normal stories and text messages about the quake, and by half past had interviewed someone from the US Geological Survey about the location, severity and other interesting details - the guest explained that it was felt as far north as Consett, about 20 miles north of here. It was a really interesting hour on the radio, and quite amusing to hear that the first thing many did was login to Facebook and update their status. (Yeah - ok - I did the same).

It seems that BBC News 24 were a little slow off the mark - however Five Live, just meters away, were covering it from 01:00, with guests from BBC Radio in Lincoln. Whether it was just an editorial decision or not having the information, I don’t know - if they did, and Five Live is still the first outlet to get breaking news stories and correspondents, it certainly showed.

The comments about the earthquake on The Guardian and Digg are especially amusing. There’s also some interesting stuff on various blogs, and an analysis of how much quicker Twitter was at breaking the news. I half agree with this - I’d class this more as information, rather than news - especially given the policies at various mainstream media outlets of reporting a breaking story.

It’s interesting reading the comments on Read Write Web - especially those which mention that Sky News broke the story after 15 minutes, and the BBC 10 minutes later. It was being reported/discussed on Five Live within a few minutes, which isn’t too bad - but no-one is really talking about radio coverage. Whilst the internet and social media might have beat television on this occasion, I feel radio was pretty quick off the mark too.

Tomorrow the BBC launches its new home page. It’s been available to look at for a little while though, and still is today at bbc.co.uk/home/beta.

I think it’s pretty good - it’s nice to be able to move things around, do away with some of the content that’s not so interesting to me and even choose a colour. However, the customisation could go a little further as develops further.

• Living in Durham, that’s the weather I’d like to have on the front page. But I’d like to add BBC Tees or BBC Radio Suffolk in the radio box (or ‘category’). The home page only gives the option of BBC Radio Newcastle - it’s not possible to edit the stations to either select additional locals, or remove nationals like Radio 1 or Radio 3.
• I can untick ‘Childrens’ content for the home page, but CBBC and CBeebies still appear in the TV box. It’d be nice to add and drop TV channels.
• The blogs box is great - allowing you to add in BBC Internet Blog, Ouch!, dot.life or anything else, but a featured post still appears from PM. Can we have a radio button to say if we’re middle class or not, and therefore get Five Live Drive instead?
• It also seems a little pointless without the featured blog post title - it simply tells me at the moment “We’re keen to hear if you have any experience in this area.” - what area? GMail has a pretty good feature in webclips where you can choose the content that’s displayed at the top of the inbox. I understand why they’re pushing that content, though.
• Why isn’t there a Jon Holmes box?
• Eventually, it would be great if this could be more local. There’s no content from BBC Look North or BBC Tees, the music box features Radio 1 and something from Radio Derby, but nothing from my local BBC Introducing programme.

Going further, it would be nice if all the BBC ‘blogs’ were in the format found on the BBC Internet Blog and national radio programmes. At the moment, local radio blogs appear to be just content pages - no RSS feed, no comments, no pingback, no archive, no categories etc.

Overall it’s a nice improvement and I’ll probably use the BBC home page more than before, but it would be nice to have just a little more control. And that Jon Holmes box.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the closure of some stations on DAB Digital Radio, and over the past week there’s been a lot of speculation on what GCap might do about their stake in Digital One, who operate a digital radio multiplex which carries stations like Planet Rock, theJazz, Virgin Radio and Birdsong. Fru Hazlitt (who I’ve stood next to - go me) has today announced that GCap will be closing Planet Rock and theJazz. She said;

“DAB with its current cost structure and slow consumer response is not an economically viable platform for the group.” - Fru Hazlitt

There’s plenty of analysis at Media Guardian, as well as comment from folk including James Cridland and Nick Piggot.

I know some people who bought digital radio just for Planet Rock, and I don’t imagine that they’ll be best pleased. On a personal level, DAB feels quite different to how it did back in 2004 when I bought my first set. It was a fairly heavy and robust thing bought after lots of saving up - really just to listen to Virgin Radio in the evenings where AM reception was poor and to get more choice during the day than FM offered.

Having moved to the North East, I can’t move for FM stations. There’s Alpha, Durham FM and Sun FM from TLRC alone, three BBC locals (Tees, Newcastle and York), Metro, Galaxy, TFM, Century and others - all on my cheap DAB/FM radio. But this isn’t the same everywhere and the loss of another two or three DAB stations will be noticable to real fans.

GCap also announced that they’re trying out streaming radio on the iPhone and iPod touch. This would be a “killer app” for me, especially having seen what my Reciva set can do with listen again content and podcasts. It’s not the first time that streaming radio has been done on the iPhone, but it does look good and easier for the consumer.

The BBC has revealed the new look of BBC Three, and the orange blobs are set to go.

Credit: BBC. But I captured it all on my own!

According to research carried out by the BBC, viewers think that they’re “cold and shouty”. Personally, whilst I never really warmed to them, they’re unique and interesting. I think the background is a little cold, but you couldn’t accuse the channel of not having a personality.

Credit: BBC Press Office

Being honest, I’m not keen on the new branding. All I’ll say is that the channel gets a really hard time from the DCMS select committee and this’ll do nothing to help. ;-)