yadayada said:
Why? We are in Tech Valley, one of the most CONGESTED areas in upstate NY that is growing. This needs to be serviced better and not ignored!!
(...)
This is not a small upstate city and it is growing MUCH FASTER than Syracuse with the Tech Valley situation. I am surprised CC-Albany did not see that and at least make Albany their "central" HQ.
I know people in both markets, and though I know more people in Syracuse, I have to agree with you 100%. In this battle, Syracuse should have lost the jobs to Albany. Everyone I know who has lived elsewhere before coming to Syracuse always jokes about the fact that stations even HAVE traffic reports, because there are barely ever any major problems. Rush hour is at the same time every day, and the usual bottlenecks are always the same. When the Carrier Dome or the State Fair is done with a big game or concert, there are backups as the crowd leaves the venue. It's mostly common sense, the worst delays are usually no more than 10 minutes, and if you've lived in Syracuse for more than 2 weeks, you know how to easily avoid said bottlenecks.
The driving is more intense and the traffic is way more active in Albany. Even someone who's completely unfamiliar with BOTH cities will immediately see this the moment they get off the Thruway. Even though Exit 36 in Syracuse (I-81) is way too cramped to handle the volume of traffic at busy times, any backups there are still nothing compared to the craziness at Exit 24 in Albany. Traffic around the Carousel Mall is nothing compared to Crossgates traffic (again, common sense, if it's the month of December, it's gonna be congested near the mall), and the parking situations for the Carrier Dome and the State Fair, while not perfect, are still much easier to manage than trying to get out after an event at the Pepsi Arena. Last but not least, Freebie 90 and 787 are considerably busier than 81 and 690.
I have a feeling CC went with Syracuse because it's already doing traffic for Rochester, Binghamton, Utica (yes, Utica) and a few other places. The staff is small, and it relies entirely on police scanners and DOT/Thruway websites to get the info. They're probably so busy keeping track of several markets that the voicetracks aren't being sent early enough, so the systems wind up airing the reports from either the same hour yesterday or the week before (depending on how they're set up). Or, they're recording the reports too early, which is just as bad. Voicing a 3:00PM report at 2:15 is NO way to run a reputable operation. Sadly, folks are told to err on the side of recording/sending voicetracks early so they don't miss their air slots in the other cities. I certainly wouldn't want to be in their position, and they probably aren't too pleased with the extra work either, but they probably figure it's better than being fired. Either way, it's a poor move on CC's part.
Another way of looking at it... WSYR never had weekend traffic. WGY did... they didn't do it to be frivolous, but because Albany
needs weekend traffic reports.
If I were in charge, I'd have 2 traffic people working 8-hour shifts (5a-1p / 1-9p) for Syracuse, Albany and Rochester. These markets each deserve their own in-house people doing LIVE traffic, especially considering WSYR, WGY and WHEN have such strong heritages and they are the dominant news/talkers in their markets. Smaller markets like Utica and Binghamton (which are being sold off anyway) should either eliminate traffic completely, or have one person doing the reports for both cities. Much easier to get away with out-of-town traffic in markets that don't really have traffic to begin with. Besides, CC doesn't have a news/talker in Utica (or Binghamton, I believe) so there's no need for live, detailed traffic. You can get away with slightly stale, generalized traffic on music stations where too much talk is a sin to begin with.
Unfortunately, traffic is just a small part of the equation. If someone's listening primarily for the TOH news or for the talk shows, there's not much chance they'll flip the station JUST during traffic to hear it on someone else's air. But, I can see where people who listen primarily for the traffic, who could then wind up "sticking around" for another quarter-hour or two afterwards, would be lost to other stations where the traffic reports are more accurate. Still, the number of listeners who tune out just because of traffic probably isn't significant enough for CC to notice. Even if it was, the local management is probably too fearful to call upper management on a mistake like that. How many people have the balls of steel it takes to tell a Regional Vice President he/she made a bad move? Probably not many, unless they had a huge stack of listener e-mails and letters (and letters to the editor of local papers) to back them up.
!! You clearly have TOO much time on YOUR hands or else you would not be bothered with spell checking anyone's typos or spelling mistakes on this board.