NorthPine.com is run by Jon Ellis, who has worked in the broadcast news industry for a quarter century.
Please send news items, updates, or corrections to JonEllis@NorthPine.com.
Upper Midwest Broadcasting covers Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, northwestern Ontario, and Manitoba. Unless otherwise indicated, news items on this site come from one of four sources:
- FCC or CRTC documents
- The stations themselves
- The author’s own observations about things broadcast on the public airwaves
- Reports from other reliable sources about things broadcast on the public airwaves
Upper Midwest Broadcasting is intended to be a “site of record” for major events such as station sales, new station sign-ons, format changes, and major facility changes. Items such as lineup adjustments and personnel changes are also reported when the author receives the information firsthand, rather than duplicating changes already reported by other sources.
The site first went online in Summer 1996. It was originally known as The Minnesota/Western Wisconsin Radio and TV Page, then the Minnesota/Wisconsin Broadcasting Page until the site was expanded to its current name and coverage area in April 1999. It was hosted by Prodigy until June 1998, and then located for a short time at GeoCities until NorthPine.com was launched in March 1999.
Why is it called NorthPine.com? The name is a derivation of norway pine, the official state tree of Minnesota. The original intent was to offer a site with many different types of information, but the broadcasting section is the only one that ever really materialized.