April 9th, 2009 
joel As conjecture runs wild in the comments here at The Press and Tower regarding future of the structure of Lilly Broadcasting’s holdings in Erie, we have learned that things continue to be in limbo.
Meanwhile, several actions have been taken to strip the 13th and Peach location of functions that make a television station what it is. These are the only facts we know for certain:
- Master control functions that play the programs and spots according to the station schedule moved to WICU several months ago
- The WSEE sales force has moved to State St. just over a week ago
- The studios at WICU have been rearranged, moving their current news set to either accommodate an additional set and/or for a new construction project
What remains at WSEE’s Peach St. location currently is the news room, studio, and commercial production suite. Personnel have been told by management regarding the future of the WSEE news team that the situation is “fluid.”
Certainly there are several options the Lilly’s can take with the further consolidation of their staffs at WICU and WSEE, including strategic use of The CW for prime time news, but no complete outline has yet been established or announced to the rank and file.
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B. Lilly doesn’t wantc you to know. Just wait for the meltdown!
At what point does it become counterproductive to have 2 news broadcasts coming from the same station? Seems like a waste to merge them into one building but have 2 sets of anchors at the same time.
Why not just get rid of wicu news and just put on wsee news on both channels that would be cheaper.
It is a shame the situation at WSEE is “fluid.” Perhaps brian Lilly can make up his mind once and for all so that many talented employees know where their job security stands?
did john treanor leave wsee?
Ok this information I have came from a story about digital TV in the Meadville Tribune. It reads that all three Lilly stations will be broadcasting digitally on both digital antennas. 35-1 is CBS, 35-2 is CW, 35-3 is NBC. Now Brian Lilly is saying that when the WICU transmitter goes on the air around early June, it will broadcast like this:
12-1 NBC, 12-2 CW, 12-3 CBS. Remember that WSEE’s DTV16 antenna is located right under the WICU DT12 antenna.
In my opinion this makes absolutely no sense at all. Now Brian, if you see this, consider the following instead.
Keep one of the two DTV antennas at the Donation Road site, then move the other station inland (Say Union City) so you can improve coverage in the hills into Warren, Titusville, Meadville, Franklin and Oil City. Right now DTV16 is not watchable down here even with an outdoor antenna and a power boost. As I’ve seen posted in this blog before the DTV16 could also use a power boost.
If Lilly is not willing to improve reception to the 3 county market (could also grab Forest and Northern Venango if we tried-Pittsburgh can no longer service it with DTV) then at least offer different programming choices on the -2 and -3 channel. Some examples would be a weather channel (many markets have it), My network TV (soon to be a video service not a real network), Retro TV with classics TV shows, Movie channel from MGM (I think it is called THINK tv offered in the Cleveland area on WUAB-dt2).
Let’s be smart about the use of resources and FIX this reception problem one way or another (power boost of antenna moved inland) for those that can’t get cable and those who have Directv that doesn’t offer local channels.
Brian Lilly doesn’t care about your wishes. All he wants is your advertising dollars.
There must be quite a remodeling/construction project going on inside TV-12? Driving by last Saturday (the 11th) I noticed a very large removable dumpster behind the station overflowing with drywall, two by fours and plywood.
Even if a “merger” doesn’t occur it will still be nice to see what the new WICU News set will look like