You already know: big earthquake in Peru today.  So far (around midnight), over 70 dead, almost 700 injured.

We get ATV‘s North American service on the dish, so I recorded tonight’s programming.  Estoy aprendiendo español anyhow, and I was curious to see how a crisis like this gets covered in Peru as opposed to the US and elsewhere.

Pretty much what you’d expect, at least for a while: two studio anchors fielding calls from government officials and experts, cutting back and forth to field reporters showing the most vivid footage they could find, which in turn was repeated almost continuously once discovered.

Then, even while casualty numbers continued to rise, the news coverage… stopped.

You see, ATV is also home to the highest-rated gossip show in the country, Magaly TeVe.  With all the latest urgent celebrity news.  And obviously you can’t preempt that.

Once these unmissable tidbits were over, however, ATV went back to informing their fellow Peruvians about the damage across the coast, loss of power and water facilities, and mounting civilian casualties.

Nosotros todos tenemos nuestras prioridades.