Screen grab of erietvnews.com - June 15, 2011

The new website for Lilly’s Broadcasting’s news products at WICU and WSEE is a huge improvement over what they had to date.

The design is clean, media-rich, and should be profitable. What’s interesting is that the on-air promos continue to push the individual domains for the TV stations, wsee.tv and wicu12.com, which then forward to erietvnews.com. I think that’s a good idea, since they have over a decade and a half of branding invested in those domains and rolling out a whole new brand is unnecessary and expensive. And it shows that in spite of much discussion in these parts, Lilly-Erie seems to be committed to keeping the individual news brands separate.

Features of the site are headlines up front, news articles with full-size video complete with ability to link and even embed video onto your own site, as well as share on Facebook or Twitter. There’s also satellite weather and only one ad “above the fold” so that your not wading through so many pop-ups to get to the top news. I like the bio page, with nice new pictures of the news staff and some witty personal stories, as well as the comprehensive directory of the entire company, complete with phone extensions and email links…I appreciate the willingness to be available to the viewers.

They’ve also included a mobile version of the site, which now joins YourErie.com in having separate mobile strategy for a mainstream Erie news outlet. We’ve yet to see any kind of mobile app to come out of GoErie.com/Erie Times-News.

There is still some cleanup to do at erietvnews.com, some design issues including random white space and lines that fall off, along with broken links. However, we are grateful for the investment made in this technology that really enhances viewer’s lives.