Watching from afar, it has been interesting following the launch, growth and death of the local Patch sites in Wisconsin.

America Online (AOL), in an effort to reinvent itself, went into strategic markets throughout the United States and launched a number of websites dedicated to filling journalistic gaps. With sites in a number of Milwaukee’s suburbs and nearby communities, a mix of national content was presented along with the writings of local editors and volunteer submissions.

Brookfield, Shorewood, Greendale and other near-by areas were super served with ultra-local coverage – which usually consisted of reports of local government and school board meetings, community events and features of new businesses and interesting people.

On the one-year anniversary of the Sikh Temple shooting, I chatted with local editors Mark Schaaf and Charles Gorney who covered the event for Oak Creek Patch. At that time, Schaaf was the lead editor on the Oak Creek site and Gorney is a college student, who has been floating between all of the Wisconsin Patch sites as part of a summer internship.

Some of the work the local editors did was available at other local media outlets, but many of the stories Patch editors covered were not. Often, for media sites with a news department, there are not enough resources available to cover everything. Editors and producers have to make daily choices on which stories are worth going after, and often that decision is rooted in which items affect the most people in the coverage area.

Because of this, that’s where niche, and very local news outlets can exist. In fact, one of the successes of the 15-year-old and counting OnMilwaukee.com has is covering events and news that other outlets have only dipped a toe in in the waters of the digital space. Other niche sites, newspapers, magazines and small radio stations continue to serve different segments of the community this way.

But for AOL, the Patch model didn’t work to the level of profit needed by the big corporate machine in all of the markets that launched community sites. Not all of AOL’s sites have closed, but 150 of the 900 sites have been consolidated, including the ones in Wisconsin. AOL, which owns The Huffington Post, TechCrunch and other sites, is now taking nationally-generated content and posting it on the local sites.

"Patch's strategy will be to focus resources against core sites and partner in towns that need additional resources," the company said in a statement to USA Today back in August. "Unfortunately, with these changes we are announcing today, we will be reducing a substantial number of Patch positions."

According to former Patch editor Mark Maley, many of the 12 local editors who were let go have moved on to other projects.

"Two have started their own marketing firm; three are starting or will start their own local news sites; three of us (including me) have full-time marketing/PR jobs; and I think one is working part-time for a local paper. They are all very talented ... and by the end of the year, I predict all will have great jobs," Maley posted on Facebook.

It is always sad when there are fewer local voices among the media ranks, but it is not too hard to find reasons why the AOL venture didn’t pay off here in the Milwaukee area.

In 2007, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong founded Patch.com as a potential new revenue stream based on readers flocking to news coming from their own neighborhoods. Patch was bought by AOL in 2009 and went out and hired a large number of employees in different markets to write and edit content and to sell digital ads to local businesses.

As advertising revenue grew – including $361 million in the second quarter of this year – the performance of page views lagged behind AOL’s initial projections and business plans.

From a content side, while some items like templates and packaged features may work across the country, using the same model in Wauwatosa may not work well in Athens, Ga., or the Chicago suburbs. If local editors are empowered to produce work reflective of their communities, then that would minimize the corporate-think.

My guess is many of these local editors had great ideas that would work in their markets that were dismissed or simply ignored. I’ve had that happen when I ran digital operations for larger media companies.

On the revenue side, it is a different story. AOL was able to take its national reach to provide a value for national advertisers. But for the local news model to work, the sites needed revenue from local businesses. When I worked at an advertising agency, I’ve met with Patch.com sales staffers. At that time, the clients I worked with were not a good fit for what they were offering. The CPM rate was simply too high for the local readership the sites were drawing in.

The sites themselves are still up and running. Most of the content is packaged national content, and the local pieces are from community submissions, like the Wave soccer team offering updates on games and youth camps. Without local editors, the sites will not have the ultra-local coverage it once did.

"Some people say Patch was a failed experiment – and perhaps it was, at least in Milwaukee and other regions where sites are closing. But I don't regret for one minute that I joined Patch three years ago and – along with the rest of our team – did everything within my power to make them succeed," said Maley, who has been a long-time journalist in the area and instructor at UW-Milwaukee.

"I'll let others opine on why Patch didn't succeed with its ambitious plans. All I can say is that for nearly three years, we provided suburban Milwaukee residents with unprecedented coverage of their communities as other media outlets scaled back their suburban coverage. I'm hopeful that someone else will fill that void one day."

BUSINESS RATINGS: CNBC, coming off a 20-year ratings low for the third quarter, has continued a ratings trend it probably doesn’t want. Nielsen numbers show that the network’s mid-day programming "Business Day" (8:30 a.m.to 4 p.m.) has dropped 7 percent in the 25-54 demo in October. CNBC’s overall viewership also dropped 3 percent this month, compared to October 2012.