Charlottesville Population Plummets

Published by Waldo on April 15, 2005 in Development and General News. 10 Comments

The census just released their 2004 population updates, and Charlottesville’s looking quite a bit smaller than it was a few years ago. In April 2000, the city had 40,099 people — by July of 2004, that dropped 8.7% of 36,605. The World Class City™’s loss of 3,494 souls may have fled outward — Albemarle County expanded by 5.4% in the same period, increasing from 84,186 to 88,726, an addition of 4,540 people. (3,494 ex-Charlottesvillians, 1,046 New Jersey refugees?) John Yellig’s got the skinny in the Progress.

The Census Bureau hasn’t updated their website just yet, but last year’s Charlottesville data can be found there. As always, the surrounding counties are growing, too — Greene, Louisa, Orange, Nelson, Madison and Nelson all expanded, some significantly.

With the home prices in C’ville having risen 88% between ’00 and ’04 (the median has gone from $116k to $218k), presumably it’s the lower and middle classes being driven outward, but Albemarle sales prices have shot up, too. Do we abandon Charlottesville to the free market, running the risk of becoming Virginia’s Detroit? Or do we take this as a sign that all is not well in our fair city and figure out what the solution is?

Woman Drives Up Library Steps

Published by Waldo on April 13, 2005 in General News. 14 Comments

Yesterday afternoon, a woman got her boot caught on her car’s accelerator, and drove straight up the steps of the downtown branch of JMRL. WINA’s picture is totally great:

Car on Library Steps

WINA’s got the story, but you pretty much know it all now.

Station Nomenclature

Published by Waldo on April 13, 2005 in Site News. Closed

I think I’m going to start referring to the three stations as NBC 29, CBS 19, and ABC 16 when I write about each. This whole call-letter thing is confusing, but everybody can tell the different networks apart, I figure.

NBC29 Beating Down Competition

Published by Waldo on April 13, 2005 in Business and Meta News. 2 Comments

For the first time ever, Nielsen ratings are meaningful in Charlottesville, and it looks like NBC29 is tough to beat. During sweeps, the longtime local station had an average of 11,886 viewers. WCAV (CBS) had just 656, and WVAW (ABC) just 534. The 6pm newscast numbers are particularly strong — 32,000 viewers for NBC29, 499 for WCAV and 354 for WVAW (showing only Seinfeld at that time).

The general manager of the two upstart stations points out, rightly, that they’ve only been around for six months, and haven’t had a chance to make any proper headway in the market just yet. I’d figured that there’d be a certain number of disaffected WVIR viewers looking to get their news elsewhere, but I thought there’d be more than 500. The good news, though, is that advertising on the two new stations is really cheap.

Lisa Provence had the skinny in the soon-to-be last week’s Hook.

Charlottesville Podcasting Network

Published by Waldo on April 12, 2005 in General News. Closed

Local fella Sean Tubbs has set up what could be a fantastic new resource — the Charlottesville Podcasting Network. Podcasting was invented last year, and is defined by Wikipedia as:

A podcast can be described as an audio magazine subscription, in that a subscriber receives programs without having to get them, and can listen to them at leisure. It can also be thought of as the internet equivalent of timeshift-capable digital video recorders (DVRs) such as TiVo, which let users automatically record and store television programs for later viewing.

Podcasting essential does with audio what blogs have done with the written word — that is to say, democratize and decentralize it. Freed from the constraints of radio, long-form niche programming becomes possible. Sean has set up the Charlottesville Podcasting Network for those who have audio to share of local events, whether it be a concert, a speech, or an interview.

On Monday, C’ville Podcasting had a feature by Tubbs about the Salmagundi Film Festival. Tuesday, Janis Jaquith (my momma) interviewed the Thomas Jefferson Center for Free Expression’s Robert O’Neill about the Jefferson Muzzle Awards that were just announced. Though you can listen with fancy software, you can also just check out the blog entry for each piece and click to download the MP3.

Having helped out Sean a tiny little bit while he’s set this up, I’ve kept a close eye on the site, but I’ll certainly continue to do so. I feel good about what Charlottesville Podcasting Network can add to the mix of local media.

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