Early last weekend, the national media zeroed in on New Orleans as powerful Hurricane Gustav churned through the Gulf of Mexico on a course toward the beleaguered city.

But the storm veered west, making landfall on Monday morning 70 miles southwest of the city and sparing it any significant damage.

Much of the national media quickly turned its attention to the Republican convention almost as if the hurricane had disappeared from the weather maps.

But, of course, it didn't. And over the next few days, it cut a destructive path through the heart of Louisiana with its high winds and heavy rains, destroying homes and leaving hundreds of thousands without electricity and other basic services.

Nobody knows this better than Steve Pruett, the CEO of the Communications Corp. of America, whose Louisiana TV stations seemed to act as guideposts for the hurricane as it headed northwest through Lafayette, Baton Rouge, Alexandria and Shreveport.

The damage wasn't distributed evenly, Pruett says. Because it was on the eastern edge of the storm, he says, Baton Rouge — where CCA and its duopoly partner Malara operate four stations — "definitely took the brunt of it."

As things began returning to normal yesterday in Lafayette, where CCA makes its headquarters, Pruett says that the experience taught him something about his company and reinforced earlier lessons about the power of local news and broadcasting.

From a business standpoint, Pruett says his happiest takeaway was that the heavy investment the station group made in file-based production and newsgathering and in a fiber-based interconnection of all the CCA stations was a sound one.

When CCA decided to pull the regularly scheduled programming and go wall-to-wall with storm coverage on Sunday morning, the interconnection allowed the stations in all four markets to act as one.

Lafayette, Alexandria and Shreveport fed their video and stories to Baton Rouge, which added its own and assembled the pieces into a single continuous newscast that all the stations broadcast for nearly four days — until late Wednesday night.

Because of the file-based camcorders and editors, reporters could file stories from the field at any Internet pop by uploading them to an FTP server.

Pruett says that he can now see the day when satellite trucks become obsolete. "We are not far off from being able to do live stuff via the Internet or cell phone," he says.

As the storm raged, Pruett says, he was also reminded that in the case of a local emergency, the only place for the public to turn is local broadcast news.

"Broadcasters were there wall to wall with local information when cable wasn't," he says. "Cable networks are no substitute for local broadcasters. It become very clear when you are here and wondering what to do — to leave or stay or how to get out of town."

The cable networks are not only irrelevant, they are sometimes "dangerously incorrect," Pruett says.

Their reporters were "standing in the wrong places saying the wrong things," he says. "We saw it all weekend."

"I can't tell you all the phone calls we received from people thinking we were washed away because of the oversensationalism of the national cable networks."

The same goes for the Web, Pruett says.

"For all of its glamour, the Internet is basically useless expect for the local TV and radio sites."

And local broadcasters can be counted on to stick with the story for as long as it takes, Pruett says. "The wonderful thing about a hurricane is that it brings tornadoes with them," he noted wryly.

Gustav also underscored for Pruett that broadcasting is by far the most reliable medium in times of crises.

When storms like Gustav blow through, they usually knock out the electricity and without electricity cable is just so much wire, he says.

As part of its DTV education campaign, cable systems have been running PSAs that say all you have to do is sign up for cable and you'll be fine, Pruett says.

"But you are not fine," he says. "If there is an emergency and the cable goes out, you need a digital set."

Gustav disrupted service for most of the Cox Communications customers in Baton Rouge and as of yesterday crews were still trying to restore service to many of them.

Only one of CCA's transmitters failed — WVLA Baton Rouge's analog unit was out for the better part of a day because of a faulty generator — but that hardly mattered because its sister station WGMB never faltered and neither did the other broadcasters in the market, Pruett says.

"If I sound passionate about local broadcasting, it's because I witnessed first-hand what happened here," he says.

"All this talk about the Internet and cable and The Weather Channel goes out the window when you have a 100-mile-per-hour wind up your butt and you have to decide what do about your family, your work and your property.

"The broadcaster is absolutely still critical to the local community."

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My Labor Day was saddened when I picked up the Newark Star Ledger and learned that Ike Blonder had passed away after a long and productive life pushing forward TV technology in many ways.

I remember spending a pleasant afternoon with Ike at the Blonder-Tongue Laboratories in Old Bridge, N.J., when I was a reporter for Broadcasting sometime in the 1980s. I was there to interview him for a "Fifth Estater" profile, itself a mark of his importance to the TV industry.

But Ike didn't need Broadcasting to certify his importance to the industry. He was well known for his pioneering work in pay TV for both broadcast and cable and in TV distribution and reception.

In Googling him, I came across a personal Web site, which contained several essays he had written. One of them was something I had never seen before — a tribute to the trade press. In "In Praise of the Press," he argues that the medium's articles constitute a continuing education, invaluable to keeping pace with technology and business.

"The ability of the reporters to invade every booth and confidential suite makes their reports on the trade show a revelation to the most diligent showgoer, and gives the reader a marvelous overview of his industry.

"The reporters find tasty tidbits in every corner, and break the news on sales trends and technology leaps before the participants even recognize their own children."

I know that the press provides a valuable service to industry. The evidence comes from the readership and the advertising.

But having labored 30 year as a reporter and editor, I was flattered that someone of Ike's stature had recognized the service and the effort behind it.

Thank you, Ike.

Harry A. Jessell is editor of TVNewsday. You may contact him at hajessell@tvnewsday.com.