Sirius XM Eliminates the Traffic Channels (133 - 136)

[Wimmmex]

Great. I’ll watch film at 11.

I guess it's all about you then. ;-)

 

[michael hagerty]

Here's the thing (and I should note that the first thing I wanted to be in broadcasting as a kid was a helicopter traffic reporter):

If a radio traffic report covers six local freeways or major arterials, it's doing well. IF they mention mine, I'm hearing five other things that don't matter to me.

And oftentimes---they don't mention. I can't tell you how many times I've been in San Francisco, wondering why traffic was worse than usual and in half an hour worth of traffic on the eights, KCBS doesn't mention the freeway I'm on. Apple Maps (which deserves some kind of award for most improved app) offers me an alternative if there is one, and tells me how much time I'll save if I say yes (which tells me whether it's a fender-bender or a flaming hazmat).

To me, that's infinitely more valuable than knowing someone screwed up on a bridge 33 miles from where I am.

 

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

When shadow traffic really mattered and it is from past decades. Here's Huell Howser doing a segment about Shadow Traffic back when they were only known in New York in the early 1980's. Today not so much when GPS systems have the ability to detect high traffic jam areas and in some cases Caltrans have e signs posting traffic times.

 

[AbrahamJSimpson]

I guess it's all about you then. ;-)

If you like, and a business model can be based on, yakking about things with no relevance to most of the people on the road at a given time, hooray. It shouldn’t be surprising many people don’t give a flying fig about irrelevant content and rely on something personalized.

 

[Wimmmex]

It shouldn’t be surprising many people don’t give a flying fig about irrelevant content and rely on something personalized.

Do you have anything factual to back up your claim that people are turned off and react negatively to radio traffic reports? …or is it just your perspective and observation?

 

[Mikey Radio]

Traffic isn’t in need of the Garrison Keillor treatment.

"There's an accident on the 319 and a crash tying up the 33rd street overpass off the 532. By the way, I only stroked the small of her back a few times, and when she recoiled, I withdrew my hand. I guess our relationship was much more complicated than can be summed up here...And that's the news (and traffic) from Lake Wobegone".

 

[AbrahamJSimpson]

Do you have anything factual to back up your claim that people are turned off and react negatively to radio traffic reports? …or is it just your perspective and observation?

I wonder if there’s a reason Sirius XM dropped them. Or that they have become little more than a commercial with a meaningless, perfunctory few seconds of “information” on many stations. Hmmm. It’s almost like there are better ways to get personal information than pretending it’s some kind of enthralling experience to hear stories behind traffic jams.

Good journalism, and meaningful storytelling is great. Traffic reports aren’t that. But if listening to someone tell you that the jam is from an overturned car, great.

 

[Wimmmex]

I wonder if there’s a reason Sirius XM dropped them.

I wonder if there's a reason that most top-rated news stations run them....all day....every 10-minutes and still maintain dominance.

 

[Mediafrog+]

Or that they have become little more than a commercial with a meaningless, perfunctory few seconds of “information” on many stations.

It is annoying when the opening billboard for a traffic report is longer than the actual traffic report itself. iHeart is particularly notorious for this.

 

[michael hagerty]

I wonder if there's a reason that most top-rated news stations run them....all day....every 10-minutes and still maintain dominance.

See Mediafrog+'s post below yours. They can monetize them. That's the major upside for stations these days. We were talking about Waze, Google Maps, Apple Maps and other traffic apps and the logical end of on-air traffic reporting five years ago. Consensus was that it's ultimately gonna be kinda like sports---you get what you care about directly at the same time we'd be told about it. It'll just take longer for it to hit the tipping point.

 

[AbrahamJSimpson]

There’s no question they can monetize it. Hooray for them. If you can sell it, don’t leave money on the table. That certainly doesn’t make it useful or compelling, much like the sponsored weather reports that are basically less than what’s available on myriad apps already.

Don’t fault them at all for making money, but as a listener it’s useless noise. Profitable noise, but noise. 😉

 

[AbrahamJSimpson]

I wonder if there's a reason that most top-rated news stations run them....all day....every 10-minutes and still maintain dominance.

Sponsorship money and a pee break for the anchors? 😉

All news stations or actual news blocks pack that stuff in, more power to ‘em. There were once lengthy (all things being relative), frequent traffic reports on many a music station. To the extent they exist now, they’re basically a sponsor plug with a few seconds of even less useful information and maybe a second sponsor plug for kicks.

It’s wonderful that some folks are paying rapt attention to every fender bender and blown tire on roads they aren’t traveling. The rest of us get the actual useful information somewhere else.

 

[spt87]

With ANY traffic reporting - radio, TV, app, web site - I do tend to check out the reports mostly on radio (WBZ). If using waze for navigation then I'll see it there as well. In reality checking the traffic doesn't change much. I still have to go where I'm going. Usually alternate routes are the same or worse. If anything I may know WHY I'm in bad traffic if there is an accident or construction. Around eastern MA traffic just tends to be awful on certain, pretty well known days and times without any cause other than overloaded roads.

With waze it will try to re-route me automatically which I tend to ignore cause its re-routing everyone so same issue only now I'm on city streets instead of the highway.

XM radio did their traffic service a long time (inherited by Sirius). Yes the audio was awful but kudos to them for trying to have a well rounded service. The talk channels are better but still not that great. For that matter, the audio on SiriusXM in general is not that great even on a lot of the music channels. It has a strange quality I can't quite put my finger on. Not sure if it is digital artifacts, too much compression or something else. I tend to burn out from it after a bit and head back over to AM/FM or to the music I have on my phone. I have both an older XM radio and a newer, built into vehicle Sirius tuner and they both have that same quality to my ears.

 

[Wimmmex]

Sponsorship money and a pee break for the anchors? 😉

WINS, WBBM, WBZ, WTOP, KYW....all these stations are at the top of the ratings, and they do traffic virtually every 10 minutes...all day (and some all night!) long! That indicates that they are more that 'sponsor plugs"...or pee breaks.

And, whatever sponsorship they get, is because sponsors know people are listening.

 

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

Here is Metro Traffic from 1992 for their San Francisco operations.

 

[michael hagerty]

WINS, WBBM, WBZ, WTOP, KYW....all these stations are at the top of the ratings, and they do traffic virtually every 10 minutes...all day (and some all night!) long! That indicates that they are more that 'sponsor plugs"...or pee breaks.

And, whatever sponsorship they get, is because sponsors know people are listening.

Overlooked---demographics.

If traffic reports on the radio were the indispensable service you suggest, everyone with a car, a job and a commute would be listening to those radio stations---and we know that's not true.

The heavily 50+ audience for news and news/talk grew up with this kind of traffic reporting (hell, some of them want KNX's 1968 traffic sounder back).

I'm 67. I grew up with two-minute traffic reports on KMPC ("That's it from downtown, now let's go to Dave DeSoto in Orange County."). That was fine (but again, largely irrelevant if you're not downtown or in Orange County) because it was what we had.

But now, my phone links to my audio system/screen, offers alternate routes as conditions change and allows me to listen to KCBS if I want or literally anything else---including my own music collection (or airchecks of KMPC) and still get that information. And I don't have to wait ten minutes for the next report if I miss something or they don't mention my route---because what I have is both instantaneous and constantly updating.

 

[Wimmmex]

If traffic reports on the radio were the indispensable service you suggest,

Who said they were indispensable? I never did.

They are what they are.

Some people would prefer to hear the narrative while they are listening to the news, rather than look at numbers on an app.

That's it. Full stop. ;-)

 

[Mark Roberts]

( In response to Michael: ) Not just that, but, at least in the case of KCBS, the station gave up on helicopter and plane-based reporting several years ago as a cost-cutting measure, one which predated the Audacy purchase. Now it's reliant upon Caltrans cameras and calls from listeners. The result in numerous situations can be paraphrased this way: "if you can see what's going on, give us a call on the KCBS Phone Force line...." In other words, the station's traffic reporters sometimes have less immediate visibility into conditions than they used to.

We won't mention what happened to traffic reporting at KGO....

 

[powers]

I do miss the live traffic announcers bantering with the afternoon/morning drive hosts and hitting all of the major roadways in thir reports, which could last one minute to 90 seconds for the actual report. Today, the jock doesn't interact with the traffic reporter since they are probably voicetracked so they can't.... the jock does their break and then a recorded announcement says "This traffic report is brought to you by..." the traffic report is limited to maybe 30 seconds, of which 10 to 15 seconds is the live ad read, which only gives the reporter time to go over two, maybe three incidents in the area, with rapid-fire delivery and no time for explanation. I do understand that in the PPM-era that's the way it goes....news radio stations like KNX, etc are able to devote a little more time to more comprehensive traffic because that's what their audience expects....but music stations treat it like the interruption to the traffic sponsor's ad.

 

[FerriteFred]

Traffic reports are useless covering routes I don’t take. Waze simply routes me with precisely the information I need.

I will try it for places where I don't get radio reports.