We discuss such incredulous moments in Erie media on this open forum, along with the success and news. To get in on the discussion, leave a comment below, or send me an e-mail, or tweet @pressandtower.

Embrace the chaos!

As a preteen and teen I never missed a Saturday afternoon of American Bandstand. I wanted to know the top songs and who would be “live” (often lip-synced), and I knew the opening jingle by heart. The network where he dominated the programming schedule, ABC, did a fitting tribute.

Dick Clark was a radio guy’s radio guy. From his beginnings in Utica, NY to the career-clinching move to Philly and WFIL and then to Bandstand, Clark knew his audience, and had that gut level sense of what’s a hit. He gave many their big break, and tore down racial barriers.

Since my childhood, he made the changing of the calendar into a major musical event. Before Dick Clark it was champagne and Guy Lombardo. It’s hard to imagine celebrating New Year’s Eve 2013 without the legend.

Now the loss of the Channel 35 building is anti-climatic since the news and sales staffs left there almost three years ago now to merge with the WICU team. However, a lot of fine people made their living at 1220 Peach Street, and many can recall special times in the facility.

For me it was a place to meet friends on our way out to one of our media meetups we had Sunday nights/Monday mornings at the Plymouth. It was the stomping grounds of Al Benedict, Steve Scully, the Sugars, Lisa Zompa, Carol Pella, Dave Price, Tim Earl, and Ray Petlin, of Don Rowe, Bob Bohen and Bob Hoffman. It was jobs, creativity, friendships, and community service.

What was the old WSEE building to you?

But that’s the current reality for many of our old and new media products (When’s the last time you saw an ad for Facebook?).

Take radio for example. When local owners and smaller groups ran the stations, you saw the significant presence of station call letters and music video 30′s on local TV, billboard campaigns and sometimes the newspaper. Big promotions and contests like “live in it to win it” and the birthday game were frequent and became water-cooler conversations in the community.

These marketing efforts expanded cumulative listening and made the radio stations more valuable. Then the big groups moved in and what’s the first thing that went toward paying the mortgage? Marketing. What’s the end result now after several years? Fewer listeners; less advertiser value and ultimately less revenue, leading to less shareholder value.

It’s not just radio…every other medium has cut or eliminated real money spent on marketing. And running promos on your own air or newsprint doesn’t count. How do you tell that car dealer or restaurant to go after that new demographic niche when you aren’t willing to do the same?

It’s painful to see local time spent listening or viewing or circulation keep decreasing. Where are the brilliant marketers who can creatively stop the tide of fleeing consumers of local media, and who will be the brave managers that will resource them?

I’d like to hear from you. Let’s talk about growing local media or anything else in the world of pixels, frequencies, or copy. Leave a comment in the box here, or you can e-mail me at joel@nataliemedia.com, or by tweeting @pressandtower.

Embrace the chaos.

Fast forward to the early 21st century, and waiting to get the story up on the paper’s website is now not soon enough. We can get the gist of the reporter’s beat in 140 characters through Twitter.

Recently, the Erie Times-News encouraged it’s rank and file reporters to begin using Twitter to build another connection to readers and get the story out faster. On Sunday, Managing Editor Pat Howard pointed out how Twitter was changing the routine for the paper’s news hounds:

It’s hard to grasp how Twitter flows until you’ve immersed yourself in it, but under the right circumstances words and images can spread far and fast. Erie Times-News reporter Erica Erwin and photographer Greg Wohlford got a taste of that at the end of the week when Erwin linked to their story about Samantha, the aged, lonely gorilla at the Erie Zoo whose new buddy is a bunny rabbit.

Last I heard (from Erwin on Twitter), it had reached an audience in at least 10 countries as people amused or touched by it passed it along. Last I saw the story, it came back to me on Twitter from Slate Magazine, which passed along a Washington Post item that carried an Associated Press version that cited and included a link to the original Erie Times-News/GoErie.com report.

Got it? That gorilla gets around.

Of course, the paper’s reporters were not the first and are not the only local news gatherers on Twitter. However, they are now among the most prolific. Here’s a partial list:

• Kevin Flowers (early adopter): @ETNFlowers
• Pat Howard: @ETNhoward
• Gerry Weiss: @ETNweiss
• John Guerriero: ‏ @ETNguerriero
• Lisa Thompson: @ETNthompson
• Jim Martin: @ETNmartin
• Doug Oathout: @ETNoathout
• Erica Erwin: @ETNerwin
• Catherine Cloutier: @ETNcloutier

Couple encouragements:

1. If you are a news junkie and are not on Twitter, you are really missing the boat. Twitter is the new “ticker,” a source for real-time breaking news and instant multiple perspectives. Sometimes that goes south, as in the early inaccurate stories of Joe Paterno’s death, but the news market quickly corrects itself.
2. One of the best uses of Twitter by a local reporter I’ve seen is former WJET anchor and now KDKA reporter Trina Orlando. When she tweets from location it feels like we have a “live eye” right there on the scene.
3. I’d like to see more tweeting with running scores from sports events. Duane Rankin does a great job of this for the Bayhawks games, but last weekend I was hard pressed to find the Gannon women’s score, and I was doing the only Boro women’s score tweets! Room for growth.
4. I’ve started a comprehensive list of local Erie news reporters on Twitter to make it easier to follow everyone who is tweeting: http://twitter.com/pressandtower/erie-news-media

C U amongst the #hashtags!

If you were to do a “man-on-the-street” 50 years ago, asking Erieites of 1962 what they were willing to spend on media on a daily basis, they might pull out the change from their pocket and flip you a nickel or dime, enough to pick up a copy of the Morning News or Erie Daily Times. TV, all two channels of it, was free, along with the half-dozen local radio stations.

They could not fathom a cable TV bill the size of their heating oil or gas bill, or paying for tunes on the radio. But you do.

Have you ever counted it up; how much you spend on media every month? I’m not including the utility portion, such as the internet service, the smart phone data package, or the DVR box rental. But I have a series of four polls below, asking about what you spend, if any, on content from various media sources. Of course it’s all anonymous and no dollar figures are given, but answering the questions will give you a solid realization about your media investment, and the poll answers in the aggregate will show where our readers are when it comes to paid media.

I’d love to get your comments on this one, in the box below the polls.

But 10,000 songs non-stop launched the new i104.3 on Wednesday afternoon at 1:00, the translator of WXKC-HD2, which is a new CHR competitor to perennial market leader, Connoisseur Media’s WRTS/Star 104. The 173 watt station originates from the WICU downtown tower and covers the city well.

This signal was originally at 104.9, and years ago was a translator constructed by the late Dr. John Duda of Gannon University, and rebroadcasted the classical format station out of Cleveland to Glenwood Hills. It was then given to Mercyhurst College to aid Erie listeners to hear WMCE when it was lower power. Most recently, Cumulus purchased it, with the conventional wisdom thinking that it would be an FM outlet for ESPN Sports 1260. However, with the launch of Erie’s first HD radio station on WXKC, they put this new “i” format CHR on the HD2 channel and they are now translating that on 104.3.

It was inevitable that Star would get a head-to-head competitor. What will be interesting is if Cumulus staffs the new station with all out-of-market personalities or not. We’ll have to wait to see…by my calculations it will take over 30 days to get through those 10,000 songs in a row.

Editors Note: I have not been able to scan in the WXKC HD digital signal on my Mighty Red HD radio. Finally tuned WXKC-HD 1 & 2 and they sound great. If you have an HD radio and picked up the HD1 and now HD2 signals, I’d love to hear from you.