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FM HD: The News/Talk Appliance
- Thread starter FTL_Ian
- Start date
R
rbrucecarter5
Guest
FTL_Ian said:
That is funny - one time I sarcastically suggested a full time traffic station, and now somebody is actually doing it on an HD-2 or 3? That's really scraping the bottom of the barrel. If I had an HD-2 channel, it would be something totally different, a niche format that has a following - but couldn't quite make a go of it commercially in the market. But piggybacked on a popular format that makes money, it could be a revenue stream once commercials are "cool" on HD-2. But to throw away valuable spectrum on "traffic" - good grief what are they thinking?!
rbrucecarter5 said:
You must not have a long drive to work. ;D
A full-time traffic station, at least between 6 AM and 8 PM, would be a good idea in every market larger than about #20 - either on an FM-HD channel or on a Class C or D AM. I think it'd do better than the brokered ethnic or religious stations that clutter the AM band now, so long as it's on a decent (not necessarily full-market) signal.
I'm surprised nobody's tried it since I think it would get advertiser support. But it would only work in the largest markets since it would be kind of expensive from an air personnel standpoint. You'd have to pay a couple of "traffic anchors" per airshift (4 hours each?), but they wouldn't be as costly as news-radio anchors.
Aren't there quite a few cities that already have traffic report translators on the AM band? I know my city does.
R
rbrucecarter5
Guest
KeithE4 said:
How many really relevant traffic reports have you heard on the radio? By the time you hear one, you are hopelessly tied up in a jam with no possibility of escape, or you are waiting on sidestreets with everybody else that heard the same information and hopped off the freeway.
Unless there is an accident every minute, you would not have enough material to fill the time. Unless you repeated do public service announcements like "go no faster than the posted limit", "use your ____ turn signals before changing lanes", or "quit aimlessly changing lanes to gain 20 feet / 20 milliseconds".
rbrucecarter5 said:
The problem isn't relevance - the problem is that the 60-90 seconds that are allotted for a traffic report each 10 minutes just don't cover any major city adequately. Here in Phoenix, you get 20-30 seconds of east side conditions, 20-30 seconds of west side/downtown traffic, and 20-30 seconds of a commercial that Detour Dan and his compatriots are required to read.
This for a metro area of almost 4 million people covering about 3000 square miles, with a dozen or so freeways and a couple hundred major surface thoroughfares. That's a lot of traffic. Triple that amount in NYC, LA, or Chicago.
Phoenix traffic can certainly be a full-time format, at least during the day. Bigger cities could easily go 18 hours a day, 5 days a week. Then broker the rest of the time (late nights/weekends) if need be. I still think it could work on an FM/HD or minor AM signal.
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