My Minnesota State Fair adventure

Posted on by Tom Lany

Summer is quickly coming to a close. I am ready for school to start up again (except for the whole packing thing), but the end of summer would not be the same without a trip to the Minnesota State Fair.

Second only in size to the Texas State Fair on a national level, the fair is well-run, has interesting attractions, and is well-supported by the community.

This year, I was able to make it to the fair twice, once on the first day (last Thursday), and then again this past Saturday. I spent the first day walking around, attending media broadcasts, checking out exhibits, viewing the animals, and taking in as much of the fair as I could. Nearly every radio/television outlet in the Twin Cities comes to the fair and broadcasts live, making a truly unique opportunity to see how the local media operates, all in one place.

On Saturday, my brother performed in a high school marching band. I attended the fair with my family and uncle to watch him, and see some of the agriculture/horticulture exhibits.

I brought a camera and snapped some pictures on the first day. See them below.

Changes on the radio dial in Minnesota

Posted on by Tom Lany

The radio dial is changing this month in Minnesota, both in the Twin Cities and out state. Talk, news, information, and sports stations seem to be at the center of many of these changes.

In the Twin Cities, Clear Channel is making some changes to its talk and sports lineup. Tomorrow, August 15, KFAN-AM will trade places with KTLK-FM and move to the FM dial. This should give KFAN additional visibility, especially as they compete with KSTP-AM, which flipped to sports within the last year.

In addition to reaping the benefits of being an FM station, the new KFAN will have a 100,000 watt signal from the KMSP tower in Shoreview (most of the full power Twin Cities stations broadcast from one of three Shoreview towers). The current KTLK will not have as strong of a signal, but it will also be carried on Clear Channel’s 102.5 FM translator, as KFAN is currently.

It will be interesting to see what happens to these stations call letters. Both KFAN-FM and KTLK-AM are in use by other stations. Both call letters describe their current stations well (KTLK for talk, KFAN for sports), something Clear Channel will likely want to keep in place.  We will have to wait to see if these stations switch call signs in light of this frequency change or not.

In the midst of mid-August fairs, festivals, and vacations, other stations are making frequency moves, as well. Minnesota Public Radio recently announced that some of its stations outside the Twin Cities metro would be moving around the dial. The changes seem to feature the news programming more prominently.

In the Mankato area, Minnesota Valley Broadcasting recently secured a FM translator for purposes of rebroadcasting KTOE-AM. Mankato’s news and information station will soon be available on 102.7 FM.

It is interesting to see increased movement among talk and sports stations specifically. In a recent piece about the KTLK/KFAN switch, MinnPost’s David Brauer cities an industry leader who suggests that we may be seeing more talk on the FM dial as consumers turn to portable devices for music. I think this is great analysis, which we are seeing played out here in Minnesota. As these devices are able to provide customized (and commercial-free) soundtracks for their listeners, listeners may skip radio. The radio must provide something unique in order to remain relevant. Local news, information, and sports cannot be recorded months in advance, and therefore provide a great opportunity for local media to serve their listeners and be heard. Many outlets are also turning to mobile apps and internet streaming as new distribution models for their content.

On a side note, I love keeping up-to-date on the latest in broadcast news. This Upper Midwest Broadcasting page is a great resource, with short tidbits featuring the latest in format and ownership changes if you’re interesting in learning more about changes in this arena.

Post Offices changes impact small communities

Posted on by Tom Lany

Since I began attending college in southern Minnesota, I have witnessed first hand that the issues facing big cities are sometimes different than the issues facing smaller towns.

When I was up in Northern Minnesota last week, I saw a story on WDIO-TV about how the U.S. Postal Service will be conducting a study to consider whether it should close nearly 3,700 Post Offices throughout the country. The anchor stated that 22 Post Offices in the viewing area could face closure, including the West Duluth location. KEYC-TV ran a story yesterday about how 9 Post Offices in the greater Mankato, MN television viewing area may also face closure, focusing especially on the North Mankato location. The Mankato Free Press also produced an editorial on the subject yesterday’s paper.

The corporation is on track to loose $13.8 billion per year for the next decade, likely due to new cheaper forms of communication, such as E-mail. They have proposed numerous changes to address problems, such as cutting Saturday delivery, and in this case cutting retail locations. In a press release, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said that many customers do not need to go to a Post Office to do their postal business. The corporation is proposing increased partnerships with local businesses, in order to establish “Village Post Offices” in affected communities.

I think it’s interesting that I have not heard anything about this Postal Service change through Twin Cities media outlets. Many of the proposed closures are in small cities, and thus this is really a small and medium size town issue. I think it is interesting that both television stations focused on the closing of locations in their respective regional centers, and not on the rural locations, where there are many offices potentially on the slate for closure.

U.S. Postal Service locations in blue, retail partners in red.

The Postal Service is proposing closing some locations with an increased presence in business locations. I think it is interesting to note (at least by comparing Minneapolis to south-central Minnesota) that traditional Post Offices (shown in blue to the right) are the predominate provider of postal services in more rural communities, while commercial locations (shown in red to the right) are typically found in much greater rates in large cities. As things currently stand, there are not alternative postal providers in rural south-central Minnesota, while there are in larger communities. The U.S. Post Service Everywhere Locator tool is really cool, by the way.

It is clear that the Post Office initially established locations in both small and large communities as a service to promote commerce and communication, while commercial partners are located in more central locations. If it did not initially believe in serving small towns, there would not be locations in these communities. I think the Postal Service’s idea of partnering with businesses in communities where it is thinking of closing locations is interesting.  This is clearly not something that it has done a great deal of in small communities (at least in south central Minnesota). While they hope to form partnerships, will their be a business to serve these needs in the towns where service is cut? As small town stores face increased financial trouble, their existence may be called into question, as well.

Perhaps customers have less of a need to visit a physical postal location to complete their business in this day in age — I know I communicate with the outside world primarily through digital mediums. Consolidating some locations is probably a good idea from a business perspective. Even if revenue is a bit lower with fewer locations, most revenue would likely still be attained. The North Mankato Post Office is just 1.1 miles from the Mankato Post Office, so I can see why they are considering consolidating here. At the same time, it is an interesting sociological question to think about which locations the Post Office is thinking about closing, where we as a society send our resources, and why.

Timber Time!

Posted on by Tom Lany

The first trunk was prepared for removal.

I was sitting in my family’s backyard a few weeks ago when I noticed that one of the two elm trees was loosing leaves. We were a bit surprised, given that it was June. We contacted a tree company who came out and diagnosed this tree and the other elm in our backyard with dutch elm disease. Even though my parents had the trees injected regularly for nearly twenty years, there was little that could be done to save the (likely fifty year old) trees. We were told they would have to be removed. Standing taller than our house and stretching beyond the property limits, we knew that removing these trees would be no small feet.

The tree company that we contracted to remove the trees arrived yesterday to chop them down. The whole operation took two days. The first day they removed most branches from both trees. Their progress was impressive. Near the end of the day a branch landed on some power lines, knocking our neighbor out of service and removing our ground line. Fortunately the power company was able to come out quickly – our neighbor had their electricity back and we had a grounded line within a couple of hours.

On the second day, the tree company worked to finish cutting branches, to cut the tree trunks, and to remove the limbs. While they had initially planned to do this work with a small Bobcat that they brought, they decided to employ the assistance of a crane. The crane was fun to watch as it lifted huge branches over our house. The Bobcat was also quite interesting. It was smaller than a typical Bobcat (and it could fit through our gate), and was quite helpful when for guiding tree limbs down.

The trees are now down. Though we have a little bit of sod patching to do, our backyard looks nice and the inside of our house is much more sunny and lively. I am impressed by how quickly and efficiently the trimmers worked.

I took a number of pictures of the removal process and also a video showing how the crane worked. Follow our 48 hour backyard transformation below!

Up to the North Shore

Posted on by Tom Lany

I just returned from a trip with my family to the north shore of Lake Superior in northern Minnesota. The weather was pleasant – highs were in the mid 70s and raindrops were few and far between. It was a nice escape from the warm 90 degree weather we have had here in the Twin Cities.

We spent time in Duluth, Lutsen, Grand Marais, Thunder Bay, Canada, and at parks and scenic attractions in nearby areas. We enjoyed walking by Lake Superior, seeing the Lake Superior Zoo in Duluth, checking out small town shops and a small town church, and much more. Take a look at the photos I took, which depict some of the interesting things we saw. Feel free to click on individual images for a larger view.

While we were in Grand Marais, we saw a prop plane (pictured above) take off and land several times. The pilot gives scenic tours in his 1960s four-seater plane (three passengers plus the pilot). He said that he charges $50 per passenger for fifteen minutes of flight, with discounts for additional passengers and amounts of time. It was fun to watch him use the harbor as his tarmac, and I thought web visitors might be interested in this sight. See video of a take-off below.

We had a great time on the north shore!