Over the past week I’ve made a significant observation: when I get out of my Press and Tower journalism mode, and act as a typical Erie citizen in my routine, I consume little traditional Erie media.

The reason why this is occurring to me now is that for the past week, I’ve had a few really big deadlines at work that have me concentrating on the tasks morning, noon and night, so my blogging juices have gone on the back burner for a little while. My schedule put me in a mode of everyone else who doesn’t have a regular blog deadline, and here’s what I found out.

When I was in radio, we talked about “appointment radio;” making moments that people would stop and change their routine to listen to. This past week, when my life made me just average busy Joe Cume member, I found that there is very little in Erie media that I’ll make an appointment to watch, read or listen. Perhaps the most regular consumption is 15 minutes scanning the Times-News with my coffee and cereal. 15 minutes of NPR or Barry and Jim on the way to work. More sporadically I’ll catch Sean and Selena, or Amanda and Kevin about once a week each. Music on the radio is a weekend thing, 80′s on Classy 100, swing on WQLN, and worship on WCTL. Like many, I find that media viewing and listening is a secondary action while doing something else: eating, driving, getting ready for bed.

On the other hand, my active media consumption is nearly all derived from cable and the web. Squawk Box and Morning Joe in the AM, Hardball and O’Reilly at night.  Online its Facebook, ErieBlogs, Outside Erie, and Twitter two to three times a day. But here’s the problem: none of those sites take a long time to read, and there is no monetization affect that comes from reading them. Same with cable, which has way too long spot breaks filled with Time Warner promos.

What does this all mean?

One, I think that when we get busy, we reorganize our lives to just the bare essential tasks: I need to see the headlines; I want to see what the market is doing, and what the political news of the day is. Twitter and the blogs are half news, half entertainment (from the comments), and Facebook is all about fun and being surprised what you’ll read and who you’ll hear from. I can tell how busy I am based on how updated my Facebook and Twitter statuses are.

Two, the slashing of traditional media budgets means that I don’t know when a radio station is doing a great promotion, or about that intriguing five-parter on the local news, because they haven’t told me. There are few billboards, and little media cross-promotion tactics anymore. (Remember when Classy 100 was promoted on Loblaws grocery bags in the 80′s!) The same media managers who are cutting rates and giving rebates begging advertisers to buy are in the same breath unwilling to take their own medicine and promote their own product outside their walls, enabling the downward spiral of local media use.

Three, the shrinking of staffs and budgets have really dealt the creativity and show-business aspect of local media a blow. Where are the efforts to make our personalities larger than life? Are the people still left so overworked that it takes everything they have just to get what’s necessary done? How does that advance our media outlet and ultimately our profitability?

Finally, there is hope. Traditional Erie media is crafted by people who really care about our community and producing quality. They are learning to leverage the new media in ways that pull people back to their product. And there continues to be nothing in advertising online that will beat a well crafted television or radio commercial. (I can’t get that McDonald’s singing fish out of my head!)

So, don’t worry about me being bored with the media, I’m on my way back. It’s everybody else you’ve got to worry about!