The 2nd anniversary of P&T

P&T: Sept. 1, 2008

With a generous amount of encouragement, and a hope that I could make a difference, two years ago today I stayed up late on a Monday night to launch Press and Tower.

I wanted to provide a virtual meeting place, where current and former members of Erie’s television and radio stations, newspapers and new media outlets, could talk shop and interface with the consumers of their creativity, being held accountable and celebrating the good work being done.

To that vision much has been accomplished but still much more can be done. All in all the past year since our last birthday has been a good yet a hard year. Since last September we saw our audience explode as we covered the initial airing of the “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” shot in Erie. We covered the loss of strong TV personalities from Erie such as Jacqueline Policastro and Selena Wiles,  and the successful bids by the Kanzius Cancer Foundation and now Conneaut Lake Park in receiving Pepsi Refresh funding.

We started a very popular Facebook group, “We rocked Erie in the 20th Century!” which has brought Erie radio’s finest from 50 years together sharing stories, old photos and news clippings, amongst themselves and their fans.

Finally we noted the blog’s first mention in the mainstream media, when we broke the story of the FCC’s enforcement measures on two Pirate FM stations, which landed P&T in the Erie Times-News, as well as on pirate radio websites around the world.

We’ve had our slow and down times too, as real life took over and blogging suffered. However, we are here, entering our Junior year, outlasting many online initiatives which have come and gone since our launch. It’s not easy folks to create content about small market media on a every few days basis, but its fun to try!

Some things to look forward to in the coming year is a renewed effort toward creating and presenting media content; podcasts, video interviews, interesting YouTube clips, and such. I also want you to hear more from the current media gatekeepers; the editors, front office managers, and writers and on-air personalities themselves; to raise the value of this forum being a positive and constructive one for the betterment of our craft and community.

To you, my faithful reader, please accept my heartfelt gratitude. There are so many places and sources from which you can enjoy content, and it gives me great joy and a humble heart that you choose to read here. Thank you.

Here’s to what lies ahead for our P&T community!

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Erie Observer authors to ignite ‘rich conversation’

I’ve recently hooked up with ErieBlogs.com’s Mike Richwalsky and his business partner Richard Zmijewski, along with Peter Panepento of GlobalErie.com to help facilitate access for Erie businesses to advertise their wares to the thousands of readers our collective blogs touch.

The first effort of this network is the Erie Observer, a weekly e-mail news blast that lands in your inbox on Wednesdays. The first arrived last week, and readers are getting excited. Mike and Peter agreed to give our P&T community the inside scoop on this new venture:

P&T: The idea of the Erie Observer had to come from somewhere…how did the concept come to life?

Peter: This is something I’ve been wanting to do ever since we started GlobalErie three years ago. I believe that you can’t build a good online community with just a blog or a Web site. You need to be able to reach people in a number of ways — online, through e-mail, and through social networks. And e-mail has been a missing piece for us — largely because I haven’t had the time myself to get this off the ground. The idea of being able to do Erie Observer in partnership with ErieBlogs means we can build a much richer conversation since we’ll be engaging people from both of our audiences. We can pull in people who have relationships with both Web sites and, if we do it well, we can get them to interact more on both sites. It’s about strength in numbers. And it’s also about being able to make the most from limited resources. Neither I, nor Mike and Richard from ErieBlogs, do this full time. So if we can share the load, we can accomplish more.

P&T: How has been the reaction to the Erie Observer since the launch last week?

Mike: Good, so far. We’ve had good reactions via email, a good number of Twitter followers and Facebook fans. Maybe the most important metric is that more people signed up after we sent out the first issue, which means word is spreading. I think it helped for people to get a taste of what we want to do before they subscribed. Now that they’ve seen the first issue, they know what to expect and will sign up.

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Deep Background for August 29 – September 4, 2010

One of the most consistently criticized elements of local TV news is the live truck remote. For breaking news stories, live video “as it happens” could be tremendously powerful in telling the story. But in small market TV, much of the live shots are “after it happens,” with a reporter standing in front of a quiet scene, and often you you are left to imagine what event looked like.

This week, frequent P&T commenter R.I.P WSEE weighed in on the “happy news” live shots at the fairs and festivals, and had this to say about remotes:

Please no more live shots outside a building where a meeting took place hours ago or a verdict was read at 4PM and you are the lead at 11.

You can weigh in about live shots, voicetracking, newspaper shrinking, or any other media topic in Erie and elsewhere on this open forum. Leave a comment below, send a quick e-mail to me, or tweet us @pressandtower.

Embrace the chaos!

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Blue Streak’s last hill for Pepsi Refresh win

Pepsi Refresh

Pepsi Refresh Project

I can’t imagine that other local projects across the country get the type of local media attention that Conneaut Lake Park and the Kanzius Cancer Research Foundation before them have received in their quests for Pepsi Refresh votes and grants.

A quick Google of “blue streak pepsi” found articles from all over the region from blogs and news sites including Youngstown and Pittsburgh as well as Erie and Meadville. ErieBlogs.com has been running a daily vote reminder, and the TV stations in town mention the CLP’s efforts to win a Refresh grant very frequently.

Going into the last weekend of voting, the supporters of the renovation of the classic wooden coaster the Blue Streak have made the cause continue to be #1 in the nation for the $50,000 category. They are using not only local media, but strong social media efforts such as a Facebook page to fuel the fire.

Being in the top position attracts voters seeking votes for their own proposals, but also a few detractors. However the rancor is self-policed and all in all, support is strong and positive.

To help the Blue Streak successfully sweep into the station and finish the voting competition well, you can go here. Remember you press “Vote For This Idea,” sign in through Facebook or your e-mail address, then press “Vote For This Idea” again.

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Star 104 goes super nova in Erie Spring radio ratings

WRTS/Star 104

It’s got to be one of the biggest Top 40 stations in the country.

According to the recently released Spring 2010 Arbitron ratings for Erie, the nearly 18 percent share of the Erie radio audience that WRTS/Star 104 enjoys at any given part of the day means that if you were to pile all those people into one place it would be the equivalent of the population of a decent sized city all jumping up and down to The Black Eyed Peas. Star definitely benefited from the sheer depth of great Top 40 songs currently in rotation. Erie has gone GaGa for the Lady, the glam of Adam Lambert, and the Gurls of California.

In fact, market watchers tell me that Star 104 has reached audience Nirvana with its “skew graph.” Connoisseur Media’s WRTS scored nearly the same percentage of adult listeners in each demographic slice, meaning that it’s the station that Grandma, Mom, and Sissy can agree on. Most Erieites listen to Star and another station; from Bob to Z.

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Poll: what type of new radio station would you like for Erie?

Last time we polled our readers about their Facebook habits. Perhaps the most alarming statistic was that over one-third of our poll respondents don’t do Facebook (I’m just glad they read blogs!). Some 43% said that they only allow real-life current and former friends and acquaintances to be Facebook friends. Nobody said that they had an totally open Facebook friend policy.

This week we will be talking about the latest Erie radio ratings, and in one of my conversations with those who watch the local radio market was the fact that there has been no station format changes in the past few years. The climate has stayed the same since the big BOB launch that replaced the old Froggy 94.

Without stating an opinion that we are due for somebody to flip formats, let’s ask the question about the kind of new station you would like to listen to. The format designations below are from AllAccess.com. If you want to add another, leave a note in the comments and I’ll add it to the poll. Only one vote each please.

If an Erie radio station was considering a format flip, what kind of new station would you like to listen to?

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Deep Background for August 22-28, 2010

August has turned into a time of significant change for Erie’s media.

Long-term TV personalities have flown the market, the newspaper has unequivocally called out County Councilmen and women based on their support of the proposed Community College, the Citadel group experienced a resurgence in Erie’s radio ratings even Connie Media’s #1 station extends its lead, and Erie’s top new media properties join together to further connect their/our readers.

We are covering it all in the coming days after this lengthy hiatus. Meanwhile you can spout off on anything media topic you desire in this open forum. Leave a comment below, e-mail me, or tweet @pressandtower.

Embrace the chaos!

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