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Traffic.com is leaving the building

JD- I'm not seeing the Salem Service Model.
I've never encountered a KSKY reporter. Where does your news come from?
As far as I can tell, all the shows (except Natural Howard and the pay-for-play programs) have a decided right wing point of view (I'm dancing around the word BIAS).
I haven't experienced a Salem promotion or public service campaign in anything that I've ever been involved with (admitted, I haven't listened enough to form an opinion on PSA's).
I have no grudge against Salem. During my short tenure there, I enjoyed the attitude of fellow employees and the respect shown by management (David and Pete). Just because I'm not in any of their chosen psychegraphics doesn't mean I don't respect what they stand for... but, geez, how does WORD stay on the air with virtually NO listeners? And what does it say about the KSKY model when it and similar affiliated stations in other markets don't earn in the whole numbers in the ratings? (12+, mon-sun, 6a-12m)
How are you serving the community?
 
Grant...This is just a brilliant reply. In my view, this is what this board is supposed to be...Thoughtful discussions of Radio's Reality, and Future....Well done.

In Dallas, Salem's Service Model is best exemplified by KLTY....A highly-rated, community-loving, family-friendly, dependabe DFW Radio Station that serves its market. Raising money, and hopes in a difficult world.

The WORD stays on the Air through consistent profitability. The station makes money had over fist, and provides a Blessed Service for thousands of Listeners.

Nationally, Salem Radio Network News provides 24/7-365 News in the best traditions of American Broadcasting....and is really good. If I ever program again, SRN News will be the station's National News Source.

Also Nationally, Salem Radio Network commits to High-Quality network programming....over and above the short-term profitability of other Radio Networks. The commitment is to that Quality, and to long-term profits.

KSKY shows it differently....by commiting to quality NewsTalk Radio through not just SRN, but through the commitment to a local DFW voice as well. They don't have to do that....but management realizes that Radio's Brain-Drain is beyond criticality...They are actually doing something about it.

You have never seen a KSKY Reporter? How about hearing one?...Gordon Griffin is the long-time voice of KSKY News. He is as good as anyone doing Radio News; Local or National. Period.

Is there a Right-Wing bias? Yes. Does it disturb me? No. As the Main-Stream Media lurches Left, those sources in the middle are simply lost in the shuffle, rendering them irrelevent. Therefore, the News from a perspective of the Right is not just a Balance...It is an absolute necessity.

Am I biased? Yes...as one of your neighbors, but most assuredly not as a Broadcaster. I'm an honest Conservative...I tell the Listeners about my politics....but I am also one who believes that those who disagree should be heard as well. Just because I say it, doesn't mean that it can't be wrong. Everyone gets their say on The Wells Report. Again...Necessary Balance.

Salem Communications has taken the National profit model to a completely different level. This allows individual stations to be a success when they are profitable...Not only when the desperate need to service debt demands that every dime, must be wrung from every property, and every possible minute, regardless of how that pursuit damages the community, or the station's professional reputation.

Salem spills a little on the way to bank. So their markets can have a radio of their own....I will help them in that as long as I am able to.

Jon-David Wells
The Wells Report
 
Jon-David;
Thanks for your cordial reply. A few questions are left unanswered.
Yes, Gordon is a talented writer and announcer, but where does the news come from? As far as I can tell he and Starlene work entirely in-house. Why doesn't Salem/DFW have anyone gathering news? Likewise, SRN sounds good, but likewise, they don't gather their own information.
WORD obviously has financial support, but like most religious broadcasters, has relatively few, if any listeners. Why do people put money into something that shows no results? While I have you here, when will KNIT go back on the air?
I have seen the SALEM quarterly report, and you are correct, they have manageable debt, consistent profits and low over head. I just wish for more: more local news gathering, more local shows, more engagement with the community, a broader range of 'points of view' and maybe a more timely and accurate traffic service. Still, compared to most of the other national chains, SALEM looks like a pretty good radio operator.
 
Grant....

KSKY gets our news from MetroSource....and other news sources; AP, UPI, and SRN News. The Wells Report gets its news from those sources, and through arrangements with Dallas Morning News, Star Telegram, The Wall Street Journal, etc. We extend proper accreditation to all sources.

WORD has enough Listeners to bring results for our Clients, and Listeners. Remember, there are only 1100 ARB Pagers for this 5-Million Metro....The chances that any given radio station would not show up, and yet have thousands of people who are still listening are pretty good.

KNIT? Me not know KNIT. (said Tonto David Wells, shortened to Ton-David Wells for professional reasons)

The current Radio Business context dictates certain realities, especially where KSKY is concerned. There is no need for us to field a full news department.

As for developing our own news...Radio Stations have always subscribed to news services for content. Indeed, the New York Times set the agenda for the three major networks since Network News has existed. What makes our news different is Gordon Griffin's news judgement. Which is another reason that KSKY News is the 2nd best Talk Radio News in DFW...(WBAP) (KRLD is an all-news station.)

KSKY makes a very nice living...We could make more money....But we would also add expense....which would create a need to make even more money....adding more expense....Until an equilibrium is reached, which is unnecessary, becaus we have arrived at one now....

J-D
TWR
 
I think this whole thing is just a matter of old-school versus new-school thinking. Far be it from me to want fewer local jobs in radio, but I don't see how traffic reports will suffer when coming from a national center versus local offices.

Where do traffic reporters get their info? They're not out there gathering the data first-hand; they collect it from a variety of sources-without leaving the studio. Heck, TXDOT has a great website that includes traffic speeds and incidents as well as the ability to view video from all the Dallas and Ft. Worth traffic cams. http://dfwtraffic.dot.state.tx.us/
So, faulty/outdated data: I think not.

What about familiarity with geography? If only there were some kind of chart that had the lay of the land printed on it so people unfamiliar with the area could quickly find where things are.

Mispronunciations? Quick, tell me how to say Cistercian! (sih-STUR-shun). Well, I guess we've got all the quality issues resolved.

Bottom line: if you can do it without leaving the studio, it doesn't matter where that studio is. Welcome to the employment desert that is corporate radio.
 
I have had the "luxury" of handling traffic as both a reporter and for TXDOT. Here's a list of resources for each:

Reporter: Makes 30+ beat calls per hour to area municipalities, sheriff's offices, etc; monitors 100+ scanner channels continuously; answers a "tip line" given over the air for listeners to phone in problems they see; and, yes, uses his knowledge of the area's geography to spot issues and make determinations on whether a slowdown comes from typical traffic for that time of day, or perhaps the Rangers' game just let out, etc...things that aren't typical, common knowledge when judged form afar. There's also a Dallas Fire and Rescue website that posts accident information, along with a Dallas Police site that does much of the same.

TXDOT: Most offices are NOT open 24 hours; Fort Worth's office is not, and Dallas just went to a 24/7 schedule October 1. TXDOT only reports accidents it can see on camera. (Last week, there was an overturned tractor-trailer on 635 at Preston that had the freeway partially closed for hours. Since an entire bank of cameras was down in the area, TXDOT did not report or monitor the incident because they couldn't actually "see" it.) TXDOT does not monitor scanners (they have a 2-way radio with the Dallas Police; you can occasionally hear calls being dispatched from it) nor do they make any beat calls. Although TXDOT's Dallas office now serves as a one-stop shopping source for area agencies to report any issues, many cities still call TXDOT Maintenance directly with road hazards, bypassing the source that would be reporting these to the public. (CONTINUED ON NEXT POST)
 
(CONTINUED FROM ABOVE...don't know if you all get that 'jumping' issue with text, once you've typed 10 lines or so, but I do...)
So basically, TXDOT is a valuable resource, but they don't know everything, nor do they catch everything...and one resource they use is...voila!... the local traffic services' websites and information their employees pass along to TXDOT from their callers and their observations. (BTW, those traffic services, let alone the public, have limited access to TXDOT's cameras: Metro/Total can see live, switchable video for Dallas, Denton, Collin and Ellis counties; NAVTEQ [Traffic.com] cannot. NAVTEQ can monitor a live "tour" of cameras from the Fort Worth office, which covers Tarrant and some of Johnson county, but no traffic service can maneuver any TXDOT camera. NAVTEQ also relies on a cheesy system of viewing Dallas cameras, where 5 seconds of video from each is snipped every few minutes and looped.) TXDOT, for better or worse, is a state agency, and I can assure you that all types of people work in the traffic office--and each person chooses his own way to do his job. Some are more conscientious than others; others merely "call it in." Some use the DFD/DPD resources; most do not. It's a state job, and there are a few there that operate as such, knowing that an act of God has to happen in order to get fired.

So right now, it's a team effort between TXDOT, the local traffic services and the local municipalities. (Also, the traffic services use planes to view traffic firsthand during morning and afternoon drive.) (CONTINUED)
 
PART 3, CONTINUED...

(Oh, and consider as well that TXDOT's cameras and sensors are perpetually 5% to 15% out of order or are misreporting data...Fort Worth's system is considerably higher than that.)

So yes, traffic can be done from afar, but not thoroughly and completely. Add to that, the services that have reporters doing 4 or 5 major cities within a 30-minute timespan...there's no time to gather information because you're recording reports wall-to-wall. Lately, both local traffic services only have time to concentrate on freeways and not surface streets (remember Northwest Hwy being closed for hours and hours after a street racing incident killed some local kids, just a couple of weeks ago.) If you're NAVTEQ, for example, and it's mid-2012, and you've got your staff of 3 or 4 people in the new Chicago hub dividing up all the major markets that NAVTEQ accumulated over the years (at least 20 markets,) and the person assigned to Dallas is looking at the TXDOT page, hoping for the best, and is probably looking at KRLD's website to get Metrotal's incident list. What the kid in Chicago won't be doing is monitoring scanners (how can you, for multiple markets?,) and getting calls from listeners with information (too much to keep up with, + cost of call-forwarding everything from the old offices, etc.) He won't have any insight about an area's usual jam-ups vs real issues (he won't have time to care, nor will he ever know the local geography, nor will he know or care when a local game starts and ends,) and listeners will have to contend with someone pronouncing Kiest like it rhymes with "ice."

Bottom line, after this hellacious diatribe, this is another case of the public having to accept whatever lowering of the bar that radio throws at them going forth. We've all seen that saving money ALWAYS means a dramatic reduction in quality. Centralized traffic will do the same thing to radio as voicetracking did...removes a local voice and an "observing" human from the mix, meaning a half-assed, generic effort that plays the very same way in Anytown, USA...and we're all stuck with it, because it's now the only game in town.
 
And one or two final notes...no matter which place I worked for, it was expected that, if we missed something, you got hell from callers about it. So yes, indeed, people DO listen and they DO rely on this info as being accurate. You'd mentioned earlier that, if a reporter relied upon the state's info, he would know when an accident has cleared. Well, there's been a long-standing problem with one of the traffic services in town who "apparently" and occasionally and purposely leaves in old information, just to leave the reporters with something to talk about (or else they're too lazy to follow up and clear them out of the system.) That can happen whether you're near or afar...but I can easily see that happening MORE with a centralized effort--you don't have time to produce, and who's gonna know anyway, and who are the drivers gonna call--so you consciously use old info just to have something to talk about and to sound like you're doing your job.

Last reality check about TXDOT: There are no cameras along 635 west of 35E (the section that leads to the airport,) none along any of the tollways (NTTA does, but they do not share the feed with anyone,) none along IH30 east of 635, none on Hwy 80, none on 635 south of Hwy 80, none on IH20 between 35E and US175 (where it meets with the no-camera zone on 635,) none on IH20 east towards Terrell (major truck route there,) none that are usable on IH45 (although Houston does operate a network of IH45 cameras between Galveston and Wilmer in case of hurricane evacuations, but local TXDOT has VERY limited-to-no-access to those,) and some areas have limited sight coverage...not enough cameras installed in a given "bank." Add to that the new "LBJ Express" project that often knocks out camera access on the Hi-Five to 35E corridor, and along 35E between Northwest Hwy and Valwood (and even on into Denton County as well at times) about 20%+ of the time.

Please note that I am not their spokesman; these are merely observations. You can watch the TXDOT webpage regularly and make the same observations for yourself.

Bottom line: A nice effort, but hardly something you'd bet the farm on...or even your station's reputation as "The Traffic Leader," "On-Time Traffic," "The Most Trusted Source..." "Timesaver Traffic," etc etc etc. And TV traffic coverage is the same--relying exclusively on one of the traffic services for their information.

<exhale>
 
grantchester said:
Jon-David;
Thanks for your cordial reply. A few questions are left unanswered.
Yes, Gordon is a talented writer and announcer, but where does the news come from? As far as I can tell he and Starlene work entirely in-house. Why doesn't Salem/DFW have anyone gathering news? Likewise, SRN sounds good, but likewise, they don't gather their own information.
WORD obviously has financial support, but like most religious broadcasters, has relatively few, if any listeners. Why do people put money into something that shows no results? While I have you here, when will KNIT go back on the air?
I have seen the SALEM quarterly report, and you are correct, they have manageable debt, consistent profits and low over head. I just wish for more: more local news gathering, more local shows, more engagement with the community, a broader range of 'points of view' and maybe a more timely and accurate traffic service. Still, compared to most of the other national chains, SALEM looks like a pretty good radio operator.
Click to expand...


Salem bought KTNO 1440 and the 102.5 repeater not KNIT.
 
Salem hasn't owned KNIT for several years. They swapped it for a station in Orlando in 2005.
 
Sounds like Mike (or somebody else with deep pockets) should start up a new local traffic reporting service.

I miss the days when the traffic reporter was an essential part of the morning show team. A personality that had opinions and could make funny observations and be a sounding board for the rest of the crew. Not simply a disembodied voice that spewed out: accident working x and accident working x, etc. It was fun listening to "my" favorite radio station on the way to work.

Somebody call me when they repeal the 1996 Telecommunications Act and drop the max number of stations one entity can own in one market to 2. I guarantee that would shake up the industry for the better.
 
jd said:
Salem hasn't owned KNIT for several years. They swapped it for a station in Orlando in 2005.
Click to expand...

"JCE Licenses, LLC" holds the broadcast license for KNIT (1480 AM) and four other stations (one in NM, three in FL). That's a holding company owned by "James Crystal, Inc." out of Pompano Beach, Florida. James W. Hilliard is the president of James Crystal, Inc., but it's 100% owned by James C. Hilliard.

KNIT at the FCC: http://transition.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/amq?list=0&facid=57375

James Crystal Radio Group info: http://www.850wftl.com/pages/1177432.php
 
That's interesting...Jim Hilliard, if it's the same guy, was one of the upper management figures in Fairbanks Broadcasting that bought KVIL around 1973, and ran it alongside George Johns and Ron Chapman through most of its ascent into respectability and profitability.

James Crystal Enterprises is one of those timeshare peddlers (ala Silverleaf Resorts in Dallas) who may have intended the station to be one big 24/7 infomercial. But to leave the home of KBOX vacant and dark...that's blasphemy against Dallas radio history. For shame! Donate it to me and I'll make you a "living" DFW radio audio suppository repository!
 
MikeShannon914 said:
[....]

Bottom line: A nice effort, but hardly something you'd bet the farm on...or even your station's reputation as "The Traffic Leader," "On-Time Traffic," "The Most Trusted Source..." "Timesaver Traffic," etc etc etc. And TV traffic coverage is the same--relying exclusively on one of the traffic services for their information.

<exhale>
Click to expand...

Well! Looks like I hit a nerve! Are you one of the people who's job is going away? :( I think you assume a heck of a lot of mediocrity here. Do you really think PD's won't address quality issues with Traff.com if their phones are blowing up with angry callers? (that's a BIG if) I think we often forget how oblivious the listening public is to behind the scenes stuff like voicetracking. Besides, traffic on the radio is sh*tty already, and frequently lags 15-20 minutes behind reality. I really don't think the public will notice or care about the difference, especially with the ease and availability of traffic data from other outlets.

This is happening, and that sucks for all the people who are losing their jobs, but the listening public probably won't notice and probably won't care.
 
Indeed, you DID hit a nerve! I've got nearly 8 years sunk into this occupation (and another 10 in the trenches) and I thought it was necessary to explain all the nuts and bolts to those who might not know. PD's, in one major case anyway, are more apt to go the cheapest route. Traffic.com/NAVTEQ did ask for a bigger chunk, because they could prove they were worth it. (Example: When CBS owned/controlled Westwood One, who in turn owned Metro Traffic, the CBS-TV O-and-O in New York City demanded that they be allowed to switch to Traffic.com because Metro was not giving them the accuracy they needed, and didn't offer the cool graphics Traffic.com had. Once they got the OK, our CBS-11 went and got the same approval...so Teresa Frosini's information didn't come from sister company Metro Traffic, it came from Traffic.com.) Traffic.com also traded out inventory to help offset the cost of their services (but I think that's pretty common, anyway.)

I disagree that traffic info lags that far behind, at least not in the good ol' days of Traffic.com. WBAP's "every 6 minutes" reports were as dead-on as you could get...three seasoned airborne reporters + three producers in studio (including one who was specifically assigned to WBAP, and all three were exclusively working the DFW area) and a pretty fierce dedication to getting it right and communicating information quickly. I honestly don't think it could have been done any better or more thoroughly.

Now later in the day, strictly due to blatherer Sean Hannity and his penchant for taking breaks at whatever interval he chose, at least four reports (~:15 and ~:45 over the course of two hours) had to be prerecorded, usually 10 minutes beforehand.

No, thank God my job's not going away. I was in on the FIRST round of layoffs there, back in 2009. There's even one person there now who will have been laid off TWICE from the same company. Many of these NAVTEQ folks were part of that "team" I mentioned earlier, and, like most of their radio compadres, will have to leave the biz completely to get back to their current salary level, if they even can. (Or all clamor for one or two openings at Metrotal, with one person doing the work of five, for maybe 75% of their t.com salary. Me? No thanks.)

But forgive me if I take all of this seriously. At Traffic.com, we had a system, we had a strong team, and there was a real dedication to doing it the right way ("and not Metro's way," as was said many times.) To see that effort being thought of as useless or unimportant or to be told that people don't care...that's hard to take, whether it's the reality of today's industry or not.

BTW, re: the "availability of traffic data from other outlets"...In this market, and in most of the US, it ALL comes from either Metro/Total or NAVTEQ/Traffic.com, be it via GPS units, Yahoo, MSN etc, television or radio. I don't know of any resource that exclusively draws info from TXDOT and does not use Metro or Traffic.com. They'd be fools if they did. TXDOT is just not set up to be a one-stop vendor for 24/7 traffic information across the entire DFW listening area.
 
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