January 1st, 2010 
joel Happy New Year and welcome to the “teens!”
As was the case with much of the last ten years, the decade ended last night with the media front and center of culture’s conversation. With top-talker Rush Limbaugh finally released from a Honolulu hospital, and Fox viewers in O&O markets thankful for a momentary reprieve from losing their football, media doings are never far from top-of-mind.
Here’s the top stories we were talking about in 2009, by month:
- January: local TV stations and the Times-News cover the inauguration of President Barack Obama on January 20th
- February: longtime Erie broadcaster and cancer machine inventor John Kanzius succumbs to cancer on February 18th
- March: Nancy Dymond replaces David Calabrese as market manager of the Connoisseur Media radio cluster in Erie
- April: a video capture of an apparently intoxicated off-duty Erie Police officer uploaded to YouTube created a local and national controversy about police relations with the minority community, and the new reality of social media
- May: Lilly Broadcasting merged the newsrooms of WICU and WSEE, resulting in the elimination of about a dozen off-air and on-air jobs
- June: WICU is the final TV station to switch off their analog transmitter and put Erie completely into the digital television age
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July: The seven day build of a home for Erie’s Clara Ward culminated in the July 2nd reveal of the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition house - August: Star 104/WRTS increased it’s dominance in Erie radio as the Spring 2009 Arbitron ratings were released
- September: Former Erie Congressman Phil English began his high profile blog “Presque Isle to the Potomac” on GlobalErie.com
- October: The Erie Times-News was named Newspaper of the Year by the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association
- November: Erie’s most-visited media website, GoErie.com underwent a major redesign
- December: The weekend of December 12th and 13th turned out to be one of national media attention on Erie, as Saturday Night Live mentioned the fictional “Erie Chamber of Commerce” as part of a PGA spoof over the Tiger Woods controversy, then a two-hour special episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition showcased the work of thousands of volunteers impacting an eastside Erie neighborhood.
Next week, we’ll talk with one of Erie’s top media watchers about the past year and what we might see in the new year. Stay tuned.
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Deep Background for Feb. 22-28, 2009
It has been an eventful week in Erie media. WSEE became the first commercial television station to drop it’s analog signal for good. WQLN-TV finally completed its fix of their transmission system and are now full-power digital.
And this week marked the untimely passing of John Kanzius, who took his RCA broadcast engineering training to sign on WJET-TV in the mid-1960’s, and to create a promising cancer-killing radio wave machine in the late 2000’s which, if trials are successful, could save millions from the scourge of the disease, and maybe bring in billions of dollars in manufacturing to the Erie area.
Here on Deep Background is your chance to speak your mind to all of these and other matters in the media, locally and nationally. If you wish to contact me privately, my e-mail is joel@nataliemedia.com or on Twitter @pressandtower.
Embrace the chaos!