 Contact 
Call 617-9696
Webmail
Letters
News Tips
Copyright Info
Archives
Quick News
Search
Alaska
Ketchikan
SE Alaska
Alaska News Links
Columns
- Articles
Dave Kiffer
Fish
Factor
Money Matters
Historical
Ketchikan
June Allen
Dave
Kiffer
Louise
B. Harrington
Ketchikan
Arts & Events
Ketchikan
Arts
Ketchikan
Museums
KTN Public
Library
Sports
Ketchikan Links
Public Records
FAA Accident Reports
NTSB
Accident Reports
Court Calendar
Court Records Search
Wanted:
Absconders
Sex Offender Reg.
Public Notices
Weather,
Webcams
Today's
Forecast
KTN
Weather Data
AK
Weather Map
AK Weathercams
AK Earthquakes
TV Guide
Ketchikan
Ketchikan
Phone Book
Yellow
Pages
White
Pages
Government
Links
Local Government
State & National
|
|
Saturday
December 14, 2013
Sunset Reflections
Front Page Photograph By TOM LECOMPTE ©2013
(Please respect the rights of photographers, never republish or copy
without permission and/or payment of required fees.)
Ketchikan: Cable TV came to Ketchikan 60 years ago; KATV was first station in Alaska By DAVE KIFFER - Sixty years ago this Fall, long before digital cable and large screen televisions, the residents of Ketchikan were just beginning to experience the first cable television operation in Alaska and one of the first cable stations in the country.
The first location for the new cable television station was a narrow yellow building clinging to the water side of the bluff that the Ketchikan tunnel currently goes through.
Photograph courtesy Library of Congress
Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
In October of 1953, local entrepreneurs R.D. “Chuck” Jensen and Wally Christiansen started Ketchikan Alaska Television (KATV), a local cable television company.
Both men had come to Ketchikan is the 1940s. Jensen, a former Coast Guard patrol boat captain, operated Ketchikan Instrument Company which sold marine instruments and repaired compasses. Christiansen was a navy veteran and a radio repair technician.
The technology to produce cable television goes back nearly 100 years, but it was only in the late 1940s that the first cable television services began to blossom.
In the economic boom of the post war years, there was also a boom in the number of new broadcasting licenses. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) found that many markets were being overrun by new television stations causing overcrowding of the existing channels 2 through 13.
As result, a freeze was instituted on new licenses. The freeze was expected to be short, but ended up lasting more than four years.
In the meantime, entrepreneurs turned to cable systems as a way to enter broadcasting. The cable systems were initially supposed to only rebroadcast existing signals to isolated areas.
Most sources indicate that the first cable television station to go on the air was developed by John Walson in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania in 1948, quickly followed by Robert Tarlton in Lansford, Pennsylvania. In both cases the systems, were small scale operations just going to a few locations within small communities. Even by the 1950s, there were only a handful of cable stations across the country.
Ketchikan was too small in those days, around 5,000 in population, to support a traditional broadcast television station. And the distances and mountainous terrain made it impossible to pick up signals from elsewhere. - More...
Saturday PM - December 14, 2013
Alaska: Governor Parnell Unveils FY 2015 Budget; Critics Say Governor’s Budget Reveals Impacts of Massive Oil Giveaway By MARY KAUFFMAN - Governor Sean Parnell unveiled his FY 2015 budget this week, proposing $1.3 billion less in general fund spending than the current year and 150 fewer positions.
Specifically, Governor Parnell’s budget totals $5.6 billion in state general funds and $12.4 billion when the Permanent Fund, federal and other funds are included. The governor’s FY 2015 budget proposes 18.4 percent less in general fund spending than the current year.
“Our budget proposal does something the federal government seems incapable of: It significantly reduces spending and addresses the biggest cost driver - our state’s unfunded pension liability payments,” Governor Parnell said. “My administration is focused on living within our means, meeting our constitutional priorities, fixing what we have, and finishing what we’ve started. I will continue to work with legislators to hit a lower fiscal target.”
The Department of Revenue’s fall revenue forecast, released last week, showed a substantial decrease in revenue due to lower oil prices, declining production, and the closing out of capital credit tax liabilities from the previous oil tax system. In fact, at current oil prices, Alaska’s revenue stream is about the same under the More Alaska Production Act, and the new tax system better protects Alaskans at even lower oil prices.
|
|
Governor Parnell announced a plan to address Alaska’s single largest cost driver: unfunded pension liabilities. The governor’s budget proposal includes a recommendation to transfer $3 billion from a budget savings account into the state’s retirement trust funds. The effect is to pay down debt, resulting in lower fixed annual payments for the state.
Regarding the unfunded pension liabilities Governor Parnell said, “We need to tackle this problem now instead of pushing it off to our children and grandchildren.”
The FY 2014 deficit will reach $1.95 billion, Parnell conceded. According to the Alaska Democratic Party, this deficit breaks a promise Parnell made last year, that the FY 2014 budget would have a $500 million surplus. Parnell’s FY ’14 and ’15 budgets will spend $3 billion of Alaska’s savings in just two years, representing over half of the $5 billion Statutory Budgetary Reserve said the Alaska Democratic Party.
“The Oil Giveaway has left our state budget with multibillion dollar deficits, breaking Gov. Parnell’s promise to balance the budget,” said Mike Wenstrup, Chair of the Alaska Democratic Party.
Vic Fisher, a delegate at the Alaska Constitutional Convention and one of the lead sponsors of the ‘Vote Yes—Repeal the Giveaway!’ campaign to overturn Senate Bill 21, said the Governor has a more than a $3 billion dollar draw on state savings in FY 2014 and 2015 to cover a revenue shortfall created by his reduction in oil taxes.
“The full pain of the Oil Wealth Giveaway will now be felt by thousands of Alaskans in all corners of the state, but it doesn’t have to be this way,” said Fischer. - More...
Saturday PM - December 14, 2013
Ketchikan: Local Mail Will Continue To Be Sorted in Juneau By MARY KAUFFMAN - The United States Postal Service (USPS ) made the decision in September to change its longstanding practice of processing mail at the Ketchikan Post Office.
According to Ernie Swanson, a USPS Communications Specialist for the Alaska region, the decision to sort the Ketchikan's mail in Juneau was made after the breakdown of a 30 year-old mail sorting machine at the Ketchikan Post Office.
Swanson said because of the age of the sorting machine, replacements spare parts were no longer available and the machine is no longer made. Swanson said it was impractical to replace the machinery and that service to Ketchikan would not be significantly impacted by sending the local mail to Juneau to be sorted. "In order to replace it we would have to purchase similar kind of equipment which is much larger and would actually not fit in the Ketchikan Post Office." He said, "That prompted our decision to send the mail to Juneau."
He said the mail is flown to Juneau for sorting at night then returned to Ketchikan the next morning. If there are any delays in mail delivery in Ketchikan it would be the result of weather preventing a flight to land or because an address is not correct. An old habit of just writing local on a envelop instead of Ketchikan, AK 99901, would result in a delivery delay.
However, shipping mail to Juneau is nothing new said Swanson. He said the Post Office has been flying mail between Juneau and Ketchikan for years. - More...
Saturday - December 14, 2013
|
|
Ketchikan: Denali Media Holdings Purchases CBS Affiliates in Southeast Alaska - Denali Media Holdings, a subsidiary of General Communication, Inc. ("GCI") announced this week that it has agreed to the purchase of three CBS broadcast stations in Southeast Alaska: KXLJ in Juneau, KTNL in Sitka and KUBD in Ketchikan.
Denali Media Holdings will purchase the three CBS affiliates from Ketchikan TV of Evergreen, Colorado. - More...
Saturday PM - December 14, 2013
Columns - Commentary
 JEFF LUND: Hunting the American Dream - During a sub job in US history I was going over a short research paper assignment about the validity of the American Dream. A student asked me if I was living the American Dream.
I was about to say I was living a version of the American Dream, then took a second to soak in the irony of the moment. When I was taking US history in the same classroom 17 years before the question was volleyed in my direction, I knew my American Dream would not be found in Alaska, and especially not teaching. But there I was, a teacher, a substitute teacher, in Alaska.
I said something to the effect that my version is complicated, it changes, and that they shouldn’t be surprised when what they want from life is altered by context. I told them that there are an increasing number of people updating subscriptions to materialistic living or who are waiting for the easiest path to happiness and monetary riches to be delivered to their mail box. But there are still plenty of people who want to work.
I kept thinking about that question and my response long after the class ended.
When I was their age I had just finished my dream du jour of wanting to be a doctor. I was going to college to find direction. Two months from my college graduation I looked at what being a sportswriter for a daily newspaper meant. Terrible pay, long hours and starting out with the lowest beat. I’d worked my way from covering lacrosse and rugby at the University of Arizona to covering the men’s basketball team the year after a National Championship game loss to Carlos Boozer’s Duke team. It was the most coveted beat on campus and took me just over a year to get it. But in the real world people don’t graduate from the best beat every year. In real life people work and wait, or get a reality TV show for having no discernible moral compass or caring nothing for the feelings of others. Appreciate the irony there - we’re trying to curb bullying, then we go home and create a market for shows and protagonists dedicated to the relentless teasing of others. But that’s for a different column. - More...
Saturday PM - December 14, 2013 |
|
Viewpoints
Commentary
Opinions/Letters
Basic
Rules &
Freedom of Speech
Questions, please contact
the editor at editor@sitnews.us or call 617-9696
Sitnews reserves the right to edit.
 No New Taxes By Rodney Dial -
The Ketchikan City Assembly is in the process of creating a budget for the upcoming year. As I have been saying in my letters for years, reckless local government spending has created a cycle of ever increasing debt and rising taxes. The City is currently planning to increase the sales tax rate to 6.5% and raising water rates by 15%. This is on top of two years of property tax increases, multiple years of double digit water, sewer and assessment increases. A sales tax increase means that your food, fuel, rent, etc. will cost more. We are taxing our people off the island and the people making the decisions to raise our taxes are pulling in six figure salaries courtesy of the tax payer. - More...
Saturday PM - December 14, 2013
Honesty & transparency needed By James Llanos, Sr. - Some time ago the Recall Committee to recall Ketchikan Indian Community Council completed a recall petition and submitted it to KIC. I was on that committee at that time. - More...
Saturday PM - December 14, 2013
Mail Problems All Over Southeast By John Wiley -
Your story on the Ketchikan Post Office seemed to hit the problem face on. However, it did not go far enough. The problems Ketchikan faces is happening all over Southeast. Sitka has the same problem, where once we had a sorting machine, it was torn out and our mail is sent to Juneau in the evenings and is expected to return the next morning. Twice this week it has not happened. - More...
Saturday PM - December 14, 2013
Arrest at Elementary School By Amanda Martin -
What in God's name made the Alaska State Trooper think it was a good idea to march into a crowded Ketchikan elementary school on the night of our precious children's Christmas pageant to apprehend his "guy". Was he a serious threat? No. He wasn't. - More...
Saturday PM - December 14, 2013
Obama Appeasement Weakens U.S. By Donald A. Moskowitz - Obama and Kerry continue to promote an agenda of U.S. appeasement. - More...
Saturday PM - December 14, 2013
Burning of toxic smelling materials By Kathy Doyle -
My dear neighbors from accross NTG. (Approximatly mile 10.5), Again today I awoke with my heart pounding and lungs burning. You see that pile of whatever you felt the need to burn today, made bad smoke. Truely not intended to support a long healthy life. My home, which should be a safe smoke free zone, was flooded with your smoke and whatever was carried with it. This has caused me over 12 hours of stressful breathing. Over the years this has been an invasion of my family's home and well being. I can, have and will continue to survive wood smoke. I just see no need for my family and neighbors to have to try to cope with our homes being invaded with trash smoke or any toxic smoke just to save on a dump run. - More...
Wednesday PM - December 11, 2013
Open Letter: The Emergency Leak on the Centennial Building Roof By Gary R. Croy - The council has been given erroneous information concerning the leaks on the Centennial Building roof. - More...
Wednesday PM - December 11, 2013
RE: Ketchikan Museum By Alan R.McGillvray - I agree with 'Skip's' letter although, I would suggest that a replacement for the Museum's Director/Curator is necessary and has been ever since I got back to my home here in town. At my insistence he started to put more Ketchikan history up on display. Because when I arrived and for a couple of years after, I would go to my Mother's house (re: Museum) and look at the exhibits there that had nothing to do with our locality, or what we have done throughout our existence. E.g. fishing, logging, mining. - More...
Wednesday PM - December 11, 2013
Open Letter to Ketchikan City Council By George "Skip" Thompson - My Grandfather came to Ketchikan via The Yukon in 1919, and the family has been in boat work here ever since. My wife and I have been life members of The Tongass Historical Society since Mrs. McGillvray's tenure. To say l have been disappointed lately with the Museum operation would be an understatement. - More...
Monday PM - December 09, 2013
Please remember WISH By Vivian Benson - During the holiday season of giving please remember Women In Safe Homes (WISH). WISH provides safe shelter and support services for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault and works to increase community safety and awareness on topics of violence against women and children. The good news is that each of us can make a difference! We can educate ourselves and learn to listen and respond helpfully to someone in an unsafe situation. We can donate time or money to support our community members during times of trauma and need. We can join WISH to make sure essential services remain available in Ketchikan and Southern Southeast Alaska. The statistics from the recent UAA Victimization survey emphasize the necessity of retaining these services in our community. - More...
Monday PM - December 09, 2013
Sun on a Rain guage By Al Johnson - Visiting square one is not a bad thing at times to do. With the vote to cease the proposed rain gauge project for the reasons given places the question of a rain gauge replacement back to that square. This is a wonderful opportunity for the community of Ketchikan to demonstrate the ability to disagree and then come to a mutual solution reflecting a successful conclusion to the issue. - More...
Monday PM - December 09, 2013
Giving away the farm By Rick Gustin -
House Bill 77 is a pretty disturbing piece of work. Is it a bill to streamline resource development permitting; or a stripping of Alaskan citizens of their state constitutional right of access to fish and wildlife and water resources along with public notification and comment on resource extraction? - More...
Monday PM - December 09, 2013
RE: One-sided Report On Timber Transition By Karen Bradley -
Thanks to Eric Muench for his factual rebuttal to the farcical article published in October by the "Geos Institute" and Mater, Inc. We need to hear more of the "solid" science of the carbon sequestration regarding old growth forests, of which he writes. There is so much environmentally-skewed pseudo-science published, out to confuse the public who has no understanding of the metrics of carbon sequestration. - More...
Monday PM - December 09, 2013
Accountability By Ed Plute -
This is one of the hundreds of things that are so wrong with the 2013/2014 budget. In a town this small, why are we even paying taxes?! With so much income from tourism, we are being dumped on! Now a loss of public trust, and a complete waste of tax payer's money. It's one thing to SAY something, it's another to DO something about it! Do you recognize truth when it's staring you in the face? You need to see it, instead of those who are hiding it. - More...
Monday PM - December 09, 2013
SE Alaskan Father & Son... By Lois Morgan -
I am likely not the first person to write in support of the Wilcox families grand and laudable plans, but I doubt anyone else is more heartened than I by their wonderful goal. - More...
Monday PM - December 09, 2013
SitNews By David Williams - Finally after all these years of reading SitNews I realized what kept me coming back and that is the magnificent photos your photographers have been shooting. The opening of SitNews is always with outstanding shots of the SouthEast that makes one wish to come to see it up close and real. That is NOT to disparage the content for that too is excellent. - More...
Monday PM - December 09, 2013
Rain Bong By Duane Hill - "Art does not have to be esthetically pleasing" does not mean "Only something revolting can be art". - More...
Monday PM - December 09, 2013
Webmail your letter or
Email Your Letter To: editor@sitnews.us
|
Articles &
photographs that appear in SitNews may be protected by copyright
and may not be reprinted or redistributed without written permission
from and payment of required fees to the proper sources.
|
|
Weekly Specials |
|
|
|
