The US 67 bridge across the Mississippi River in the Quad Cities is closed for a month — until the weekend after Labor Day. The story below from WHBF* goes into the problems of trying to use the Arsenal (or Government) Bridge nearby instead of I-74 or I-280. Those problems, say the Quad-City Times, include three-block-long backups triggered by barge traffic closing that bridge.
*Not that you can immediately tell from its website name or header.
The Des Moines Register has found out a curious political-television item (bottom item) in the 2014 Iowa governor’s race: Gov. Terry Branstad’s campaign bought ad time in the Quincy-Hannibal-Keokuk market. Technically, Lee County is the only Iowa county in this viewing area, the 170th-largest in the country. The apparent political motive behind this is that in five elections, Branstad has never won Lee County.* He came up fewer than 1000 votes short three times, including a 181-vote-margin vs. Chet Culver in 2010.
But — and this is a nuanced yet important but — TV audiences do not stop at the county and DMA line, either in broadcast or cable.
WGEM, one of the stations this ad buy covers, is included in the Burlington cable lineup. Branstad lost Des Moines County by 57 votes in 2010, and also lost it in 1982 and 1986. WGEM is also available in Fairfield, and Branstad lost Jefferson County in 2010 by 463 votes. In addition, both WGEM and KHQA, the other station involved, consider Van Buren County to be part of their viewing areas.
Far southeastern Iowa and northeastern Missouri as a whole is an in-betweenie TV area, too far south for Iowa’s main markets and too far north for Missouri’s. Just to the west of Quincy-Hannibal-Keokuk is Ottumwa-Kirksville (PDF), technically its own market — 200th out of 210. Combined, though, the two have nearly as many TV homes as Sioux City, another Iowa market with substantial spillover into other states. It must be noted, though, that these two have a lower percentage of Iowa TV homes than Sioux City.
In the area, KHQA (CBS) and KTVO (ABC) now run digital subchannels to mirror the other network. (As of 2013, they’re both owned by Sinclair Broadcasting, which means they’ll be pulled into the next retransmission dispute with Mediacom.) Branstad has won Wapello County, where Ottumwa is, only once, in 2010.
With that information in mind, the ad buy makes a lot more sense, as does Branstad agreeing to a debate in Burlington hosted by Quad Cities station KWQC but, again, reaching into a pocket of the state that has proven less receptive to him in the past.
If you’ve read down this far about TV station coverage in Iowa, you may like my county-by-county affiliate listing and maps. I do need to refresh them, but most of the information is still good.
*Branstad has never won the People’s Republic of Johnson County either — 509 votes short in a 96-county landslide in 1990 — but he has as much chance there as Iowa State does making the College Football Playoff.
July 7, 2013: The backside of the “Vitame Vas do Chelsea” welcome sign is friendly, too. The white pickup can turn right on V18 or go straight ahead on the Lincoln Highway.
Chelsea, the often-flood-beleaguered Tama County stop on the Lincoln Highway, celebrated its 150th anniversary last weekend. Joyce Wiese wrote up the town’s history for the Tama and Toledo papers.
The school building in town didn’t quite make it a century. The article notes it was erected in 1903-04 and torn down (burned, actually) in 2009 after having been part of the South Tama school district for decades.
The Big Ten’s welcome of Rutgers brings along with it something that isn’t unheard of on the Big Ten Network: Games against Iowa State.
“Rutgers Day” today on BTN has not one, but TWO, unfortunate postseason endings for the Cyclones. Oddly enough, they both happened in New York City, which is fitting given that Rutgers’ proximity to the nation’s top media market is why the Big Ten went after the Scarlet Knights in the first place.
The 2011 Pinstripe Bowl and the 2004 NIT semifinal will air back-to-back on BTN, sandwiched by “The Big Ten Welcome Rutgers” specials. Ponder those words, “The Big Ten Welcome Rutgers.” I still have a hard enough time looking at preseason polls and remembering that Missouri, Nebraska, and Texas A&M aren’t on the schedule.
This update had a bit of a drought for a while, as the 1998-2003 letters were replaced all at once and now replacement plates are only for those issued in 2004 (the early N’s). I haven’t seen any CL’s or CN-CP’s personally, but they should be out there.
The editor of the Dickinson County News remembers his time at Reynolds Elementary School in Spencer, and when he decided to take a local legend into his own hands. The Spencer school district tore down the building last month.
[Speaking of carbonated beverage consumption… – ed.]
When the new US 20 expressway opened in 2012, I noted that it now went from Early to Webster City without any nearby services. Recently, one gas station at the IA 4 exit has sprung up along that gap. It opened June 20.
It’s still a pretty long drive without much on the side of the road, but I’m betting the new spot will provide much-needed relief for many travelers.
Jamie Pollard @IASTATEAD
Transition to Pepsi is completed! @Gatorade is now our official sports drink! Also, @mtn_dew in concession stands.
12:23 PM – 29 Jul 2014
SQUEE!
Now, that’s a qualified squee. Drinks at sporting events are notoriously overpriced. I rarely buy them. But since Coca-Cola has such a chokehold on the industry, this is really welcome news for someone who always has to settle for Sprite. (And not good news as far as my dentist is concerned, but I digress.)
To have the option of buying Mountain Dew or Pepsi when I go to an ISU game is progress. When the ISU campus was Pepsi (until 2012), Jack Trice Stadium and Hilton Coliseum were still Coke-only. I suspect that the concession stand change is merely a side bonus to the primary goal of getting Gatorade for the athletes. A potential hiccup? Bill Fennelly loves his Diet Coke. He may have to pour it into a nondescript cup.
UNI is also a Pepsi campus, including the UNI-Dome and McLeod Center.
UPDATE, noon 7/30: The story on cyclones.com says it’s the athletics department that signed the contract. It doesn’t say anything about the campus. The campus switched from Pepsi to Coke in 2012. There may still be different contracts involved. In that case, qualify the above squee even more. The headline on this blog post has been modified.
There was Iowa State women’s basketball before Bill Fennelly, but it literally wasn’t much to speak of. Lynne Lorenzen once commented that there would be fewer fans at ISU games than when she played six-on-six at Ventura.
Now Fennelly is the dean of Big 12 women’s basketball — and with Bill Snyder’s short retirement, probably the only continuous coaching holdover from the Big Eight. He’s entering his 20th season at ISU. He has three to go before his tenure will cover half of the program’s entire history; his contract runs through 2019. The ISU Athletics Department has written a very nice retrospective about Fennelly’s early years.
He’s led the Cyclones to two Elite Eight berths, five Sweet Sixteens, one regular-season conference championship, and two tournament championships. The attendance at Hilton Coliseum has ranked in the top five for seven years and was second only to Tennessee last season. If there’s a list of “best women’s coaches never to make a Final Four”, Bill Fennelly should be somewhere on it.
December 2001: The west end of IA 100 has looked like this, a half-finished interchange at Edgewood Road in Cedar Rapids, since 1985. That’s going to start changing over the next month. Photo by Jason Hancock.
After seven years, it looks like it’s time to update my IA 100 page. In 2007, I wrote that a western extension might be finished in 2016 (HA), and no changes had been seen at Edgewood Road.
However, the picture attached to this Cedar Rapids Gazette story shows that neither of those are true anymore. Today’s creation of an on-site detour for Edgewood Road at IA 100 is the latest sign of tangible progress for the long-awaited bypass.
The ramps that were built in 1985 will not be a part of the finished expressway; the second SPUI in Iowa will be here instead. The story says there will be “removal and replacement” of the bridge but if you look, it would appear the crossing was just graded earth.
