July 1st, 2010 
joel OK, so you fork out $70-80 a month for digital cable, another $9 or more for Netflix, not to mention your $14 Sirius/XM, and $15+ newspaper subscriptions. Now the TV networks behind Hulu are hoping that you’ll share a ten-spot for unlimited access to your favorite TV series. Introducing Hulu Plus
What do you think? Is $10 a month for TV worth the same as $9 a month for DVD and streaming movies?
This media stuff for the consumer is getting expensive!
June 19th, 2010 joel Big news coming out of the open-source software world: WordPress 3.0 “Thelonious” has been released.
Before you jump to the conclusion that this release is only important to pocket-protector wearing code geeks living in their parent’s basement, think again. Nearly very major blog listed on ErieBlogs.com and not hosted by Blogger/Google has the WordPress engine behind it, including GlobalErie.com, ErieBlogs themselves, and Press and Tower.
What the upgrade to WordPress 3.0 means to you the reader is more reliability, greater security, along with cool apps will be available to you.
What it means to bloggers and web developers, is mind blowing:
April 30th, 2010 joel When it comes to the Pepsi Refresh contest story, it’s a tale of two metro dailies.
In Erie, the Times-News chats cheerily about the power of social media and how the Kanzius Cancer Research Fund has very effectively leveraged Facebook and Twitter to get the word out about voting for the fund globally. The Blackberry-wielding concertgoers in Manhattan, the FDNY firefighters, the blogs, the tweets all contributing to the vote totals.
In St. Louis, about an hour south of the Benld, IL school that is in the middle of a slow-implode due to abandoned coal mines beneath its foundation, the Post Dispatch’s coverage is full of words like “cheaters,” “hurtful,” and “desperate.”
In the stltoday.com post, Ben-Gil Boosters supporter Mark Cunningham accuses some Kanzius supporters and those of some other causes of playing the system:
“We have worked our tails off all month long by voting and promoting, and many of us are really ticked off about getting rolled over by a couple of cheaters,” said Benld parent Mark Cunningham. He said those gathering votes for Kanzius and other causes are asking supporters to set up 100 or so e-mail addresses and to vote from each daily. The rules of the contest say that “you may vote up to 10 times per account per day, but each vote must be for different projects.” Cunningham also said the comments left on the site bashing Benld and other proposals are inappropriate.
Other supporters of Ben-Gil are more reserved in their accusations in the article, but all quoted, including Kanzius Foundation director Mark Neidig, voiced dismay at where the level of discourse went in the comments on the Pepsi website. Efforts to reach Mr. Cunningham on Facebook were unsuccessful. UPDATE: Read Mr. Cunningham’s response here.
I’m thinking that the Ben-Gil parents ran into the total Erie media onslaught behind the Kanzius effort and didn’t know what hit them; and the Post-Dispatch reporter somewhat bears it out. In fact, I did about an hour-long search last night for news related to individual causes in the Pepsi contest and there has been nowhere near the local coverage that the Kanzius effort received here in Erie.
For that Erie media should be proud. Meanwhile, whether it is to support cancer research, or get kids back into a healthy school environment, let’s remember that hope and encouragement trumps negativity and cynicism every time.
April 21st, 2010 joel 
WJET Good Guys, August 1973
The old medium of radio is having a reunion on the new social medium of Facebook.
A couple weeks ago I was going through some old pictures and reminiscing about some of the great times and great people I met in my many years in Erie radio. With quite a few already Facebook friends, on a lark I created a Facebook group for the fun of it called “We rocked Erie in the 20th Century!”
I thought it would be cool to bring some folks together and throw up some old pictures of long hair, 80′s mullets and fun memories. I’m just amazed at the response over the past two weeks!
We have reconnected true pioneers in Erie radio; folks that worked at stations with call letters changed before my birth! Guys that remember the format battles of WJET and WWGO in the 1960′s, and members of the great jock teams of the 70′s, along with my contemporaries in the 80′s and 90′s.
The idea is to bring together everybody involved in making Erie radio the amazing soundtrack to the life of our community. It takes everyone in programming, sales, management, and the advertisers and listeners themselves to make it happen. The Facebook group is just a fun way to celebrate that. Join us!
April 2nd, 2010 joel In honor of Good Friday, one of the holiest days on the Christian church calendar, I wanted to do a quick review of how churches in Erie County leverage old and new media to share the Good News.
Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, appeared weekly on radio and television from the 1930's through the 1960's
Of course, religious messages have utilized media since the dawn of communication. The newspaper usually publishes the Easter and Christmas letters of the local bishops to their faithful. Fiery preachers and novenas were heard daily on local radio, and the word “televangelist” was created for TV messengers.
We’ve written before about the sheer volume of full-time religious radio signals in the Erie market, however religion still plays a small yet important part of the broadcast day on secular stations.
Easily the most viewed local church program on TV is Fully Alive, Sunday mornings at 8:00 on WICU, produced by Erie First Assembly of God. For over two decades, the church has presented the message of their lead pastor, Rev. Jack Risner, and his predecessors with a high-quality, multi-camera production, including music, and sometimes drama and dance. Fully Alive usually wins its time-slot in the Nielsen’s.
March 10th, 2010 joel 
Bryan Oberle
It is quite remarkable how two entrepreneurial new-media networks have scored major figures from media and politics for regular contributions. Last year, former Congressman Phil English began a blog on the GlobalErie.com network. Then early this year, former Editorial Page Editor of the Erie Times-News Bryan Oberle began a weekly post on ErieBlogs.com.
Oberle’s participation on ErieBlogs is particularly interesting considering he is married to an Erie media royal, Marnie Mead Oberle and continues to be a stockholder in the privately-owned Times Publishing Company.
Mr. Oberle was kind enough to share his thoughts on the state of the newspaper industry and his transition from ink to pixels in a Press and Tower exclusive interview:
(more…)
Posted in New Media 
Tags: Bryan Oberle, Erie Times-News, ErieBlogs.com, GlobalErie.com, Marnie Mead Oberle 
2 Comments » January 7th, 2010 joel 
Screen capture of Scott Bremner's blog on GoErie.com
In a moment of very strange timing, the longest long-term blogger of them all, WSEE’s Scott Bremner has entered his last post for GoErie.com.
This comes just a day after I highlighted Scott’s blog for my weekly ErieBlogs Post-of-the-Week on the ErieBlogs.com site. Here’s a clip of what Scott said on Wednesday on his post, “This Week is Goodbye”:
As close as we can figure it, this is the 578th weekly column written for this space, a span that began with a handshake in November of 1998 and has continued uninterrupted for more than 11 years on GoErie until this week.
This week is goodbye.
Call it what you will; a “couldn’t come to terms” or an “inability to reach consensus” or an “agreement to move in different directions.”
It doesn’t matter.
What’s important is that sometimes the greatest journeys don’t begin with the first step but rather with a swift kick in the pants, and that’s what gets the first step going.
There are currently 18 other bloggers on the GoErie site, most of them current Times News staff members, but in 1998 few were willing to write original material in a little known corner of the Internet.
That’s what led to the almost unheard of relationship of a TV guy writing directly to a newspaper website, especially one where the author had the freedom to write op-ed pieces virtually unfettered.
Scott’s “web column” (we didn’t have the word ‘blogger’ back when he started) has been recognized with awards, including being named Best in the Nation by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists in 2000.
Bremner says that he is bound to show up again somewhere on the ‘Net. We’ll be watching.
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