This is an obituary for an idea that sprang from momentary consternation, lasted 17 years, won awards and respect and recently died a quiet, undignified death.

It was September, 2007, a month after corporate slum lord Cerberus took over Chrysler from merger of unequals Daimler. My job was head of the company’s digital communications team, which included its media website, social media, broadcast media relations and video production.

Since all news releases issued by the company came through my team to be posted on the special website for media, I knew everything we were putting out there in hopes of winning coverage.

The truth is, earned media, as it’s known today, is a crapshoot. You post and pray, and most times whomever you’re praying to treats you like an atheist.

So one day I was looking over some recent releases that were posted to the media site and realized there were several that earned little to no media at all. As a journalist-turned PR guy, I knew these items would languish for lack of major news, but as a company employee I also knew the item was important to someone, probably an executive, who was banking on seeing some daylight for his or her little bit of news.

If you’re familiar with the process of creating a news release and related assets, you know a lot of work goes into it—writing, editing, approvals, re-editing, re-approvals…..miles of red tape.

This bothered me.

So in the course of literally a moment, I thought, what if we created a weekly video recap of Chrysler news that included some of those ignored items? It would give those stories another chance to reach an audience instead of just languishing and going nowhere.

Chrysler’s main logo at the time was the Pentastar, and there was a big pentastar-shaped window on the top floor of our Auburn Hills, Michigan headquarters.

So I titled the recap “Under the Pentastar.”

My bosses instantly approved going forward, but with zero budget.

No problem. I posed the idea to my team but told them we’d all just have to pitch in on a volunteer basis to produce the feature every week. OK, they said!

A signup sheet was posted and it didn’t take long for it to be filled with volunteers, including myself.

We posted what we called “UTP” on the media website, YouTube and our social media channels.

It took awhile but it slowly gained an audience. Those of us who narrated UTP became known and even had followers.

One member of my team, the wonderful Betty Carrier Newman, was a former anchor at WDIV in Detroit. Has a great voice. In fact, our boss nicknamed her “The Voice” long before the cheesy singing show.

Betty had her fans who looked forward to listening to her golden pipes.

As a former radio announcer and network news correspondent, I’d record some of the narrations as well.

One year, at the Los Angeles Auto Show I introduced myself to a worker setting up our stand. Now remember, I was on the air at CNN for almost 20 years. But when I told him my name, he said, “Ed Garsten…From Under the Pentastar! I  listen every week..love it!”

That’s when it hit me we’d really done something worthwhile.

UTP won an award from the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) and maybe another. Can’t remember. It was more important that we’d won an appreciative audience.

When Fiat took over the company in 2009 and later changed the name to Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, (FCA) the Pentastar logo was discontinued. “Under the Pentastar” became “FCA Replay.”

Our new Italian bosses absolutely loved it and referred to it often in reverent terms.

All this time, the weekly video news recap was produced by team members who continued to sign up to write, produce, narrate it above and beyond their actual duties.

It was never slick the way an actual agency or production house might handle it, but we did our best with limited resources and it always looked at least professional.

After I retired from FCA in 2016 and the company was later taken over by the French, a new company was created called Stellantis. The team members I left behind changed the feature’s name again, accordingly, to “Stellantis Spotlight.” 

All this time, our two video editors/producers, Paul Cirenese and Peter Spezia kept it going. Never missing a week. I don’t know if I ever properly expressed how much their devotion meant to me. They’re two of the most solid souls I’ve ever been privileged to work with, along with Betty Newman and our incomparable media site manager Courtney Protz-Sanders.

In recent years I would only occasionally view Stellantis Spotlight as my life in retirement took on its own life. But I would check in periodically.

It had been a couple of months since I did when this week I noted there were no episodes after September 27^th. The episode is below.

As a freelance auto reporter for Forbes.com I was well aware of the cutbacks and job losses at Stellantis and suspected “Stellantis Spotlight” fell to the budget ax, which is troubling, since it operated with no budget.

A few days ago I spoke to one of my former teammates about it.

Knowing it was something I still held dear she gravely informed me my suspicions were correct.

After more than 800 episodes over 17 years, under three different titles, our award-winning little weekly video recap created in a moment’s thought and kept alive by the power of devotion, just ended without ceremony.

Look, as trite as it sounds, nothing lasts forever, especially in the corporate world. But for the rest of my life, I will always be thankful for my dedicated team for embracing, then giving life to an idea borne in a moment’s thought, simply to give overlooked stories a second chance of being noticed.