Thursday, January 15, 2009 - 6:57 pm
It looks like Metro Traffic will close its Portland office in the Northwest Natural Building. It seems the nerve center will be moved to Phoenix. Right now, some of the current employees will be retained. Anxiety is high with those on the payroll. Its the same circumstances found in most broadcast organizations these days, who will go and who will stay.
Friday, January 16, 2009 - 7:10 am
Interesting - wonder why they wouldn't have consolidated with Seattle? Unless that office is closing as well...
Friday, January 16, 2009 - 7:18 am
Saturday, January 17, 2009 - 4:32 am
Monitor Portland Traffic from Phoenix, Arizona?
I guess that makes perfect sense.??
Saturday, January 17, 2009 - 9:05 am
No snow to shovel...
Seriously, though...credibility will be stretched when the Phoenix folk mispronounce street and place names, thereby failing the "You're not from around here, are you?" test...
Saturday, January 17, 2009 - 9:07 am
Just set one office up in Kansas City and monitor Everything from there.
Again, wouldn't you want local traffic to come from a local source?
Thank you Mr. Obvious.
Saturday, January 17, 2009 - 11:19 am
As you know, Metro is owned by Westwood One, where they have had three CEOs in the past year, and big financial trouble. They are closing a number of offices around the country including the one here in San Antonio. According to our rep in that office, some people will be invited to re-locate....in our case to Dallas...but most will lose their jobs.
Broadcasting is in big financial trouble across the board, and don't be surprised if you hear about some very big companies taking chapter 11 reorganization in 2009.
Saturday, January 17, 2009 - 1:03 pm
Any other time, we'd be talking about a positioning opportunity for a competitor to talk about local eyes looking at local traffic.
When AccuWeather started doing radio stations, it didn't have a Seattle affiliate for a very long time because of the perception that nobody could do Seattle weather from State College, PA. Never mind the reality that the wx folks use the same data regardless of location.
But financial realities trump perception. Witness XM and Sirius' traffic services voiced out of DC and NY (until the recent outsourcing to Westwood One).
Voicing local radio traffic reports for, say, Portland, out of Phoenix or even Seattle? Some competitor will surely jump on that.
Won't they?
