... really isn't that bad!

I have been listening with some fascination on the web, and even Dxing at night a bit, the relatively new ALL-TRAFFIC ALL-THE TIME format on Vancouver, B.C.'s AM730.

Leave it to those innovative Canucks. This is the world's FIRST all-traffic radio station.

One would think such a format would be exceedingly boring. But it actually is (pardon the pun) fast paced and pretty creative. They have the right "bells and whistles" (Literally! Among their features are a check on gas prices, which they intro with the bells that sound when a car drives into a gas station, and the ferry schedule, which they intro with the whistle -- or actually the horn -- of a ferry boat).

Portland metro is the same size market as Vancouver,B.C. metro -- both about 2 millon according to Wikipedia -- and yet Vancouver is able to sustain BOTH an all-news AM station (CKWX 1130) and this new all-traffic station, while Portland has neither.

What do you think -- would all-traffic radio ever work in Portland or Seattle, or anywhere else in the U.S.?

Hey JOHN you have hit on an excellent innovation in Portland broadcast radio programming . BY GOLLY there is a new direction for some floundering AM station in Portland. Some AM that is really biting the big one ! I dont know which one that would be, but maybe one of our other enterprising PDXers could make a suggestion.

Just think of the time sales potential here. HAVE A GAS WAR ON THE AIR ! GAS PRICES AND ALSO CONVIENENCE STORE SPECIALS ! DO LIVE REMOTES at at the Wilsonville rest stop...Dinner specials @
the IHOP in Tigard ! Actually not a bad Idea !

Seriously, if you have ever been to Vancouver BC you might know why they would have an 'All Traffic Station".. Geez...the traffic is murder up there. Not enough Freeways and expressways...its all old timey 2 lane stuff and a lot of compressed population centered neighborhoods...

You'd think L.A. or Chicago would try this. I remember WBBM Chicago's traffic reports going for around two minutes + many times.

L.A. tried "Car Radio" on the once famous KHJ 930 frequency in the 80's, with traffic every ten minutes. Which doesn't seem so unusual at all today for news/talk stations.

Vancouver is the 3rd largest city up there, which by Canada's reasoning probably plays into it.

there is an aircheck of KHJ during their "car radio" days on the net it was recorded in stereo from a Sony SRF-A100 as they were running Kahn/Hazeltine AM stereo at the time.

Worked for RKO during KHJ's disasterous "Car Radio" period. The problem is (for now) that the diary methodology runs absolutely counter to the format.

Diary method means that you have to write down listening some period after you used the all-traffic station in your car. And since you only listen when you hit a traffic problem, it isn't one of your "usual" stations...much lower chance of recall.

And since the diary also requires that the listener write down at least a 5 minute block of listening, even diarykeepers who faithfully note that they tuned over to the traffic station a few times on their commute are likely to list a time too short to qualify in the diary.

The format had far greater listenership than ratings (and therefore revenue) ever reported. But it requires a salestaff skilled at conceptual selling to the male + in auto demo the format attracts.

I wish them luck. If they succeed, maybe they'd like to talk about "The Game Zone."

"Geez...the traffic is murder up there. Not enough Freeways and expressways...its all old timey 2 lane stuff and a lot of compressed population centered neighborhoods.."

Yes!! At times I have even thought it was worse than I5 during rush hour. And this is when I was riding in the back seat of my parents' truck!

(I lived in Victoria for a number of years, matter of fact some of my earliest "A_zone" posts here--some of them might be still kicking around here somewhere--were written there.)

I should dig out the radio and DX 730 tonight........

If only something like that existed 1996-2002......(did it? I am not really certain as I usually listened mostly to Radio 1 on 690. Still do.)

Ya ok,

I didnt consider how the ARB rules work here. 5 minutes wont count much towards an Average Quarter Hour listener will it? Maybe not such a good Idea , bookwise and as Tanner points out you would need a sales staff skilled in conceptual selling.

So now, right here on pdxradio, let us radio droids all conceptualize a format in a Metro at least as big as Portland where we could have say 16 hour traffic TOGETHER with other programming. Programming that enhances taking expedicious action and has some kind of entertainment value. perhaps feature oriented, at times. Other types of live spontaneous programming. Not a News/Talk format as we think of it now. Something very 21st century. Something very " Matrix " like. Get some geek who invents Computer game scenarios and wants to come on and promote his/her product. Charge a small fee for this person to do so, meanwhile you can do traffic and weather together breaks ( sounds like KEX doesnt it ?) Find stringers to put on the air. Find these stringers who have an agenda or business that they can promote while contributing whatever the station needs from them, short of plugola/payola of course, this could be a nightmare for a traffic person, but it could work. As long as it is legal and has some kind of ethical value. Anything goes as long as you have a 7 second delay. Just put on a conglomeration of random off the wall crap everyday and see what happens ! Might beat CNN sports radio all to hell ! Come on folks give me some ideas here ! This could be the next big thing ! Hey I got an Idea. Lets have one day of the week where we play EVPs. You know electronic voice phenomenon. We could get copyright permission to playback everybody elses haunted house EVPs of ghosts and so forth. Then we could set up each one with the place where it was recorded, analyze it all, have a roundtable talk show kind of thing and then have a local ghost hunter on the air...with local EVP recordings say from some place like the Grant House Restaurant in the Vancouver barracks. Ya, thats the idea...

Some kind of thing like an EBAY on radio, would be a nice fill in between traffic and weather together. Back in the 70s the old KBCH, Lincoln City had something called "Tradio " ...It was an immensely popular program down on the coast.

Alas, unfortunately, this cant be done well on a DEMARK/SCOTT automation system or an Audio Prophet 'Next Gen " so that means it wont work anymore...this concept would be too labor intensive...mm? Well it was a thought anyway.... mm? well that leads me to another concept..Automated traffic and weather together. We can just estimate 8 hours ahead, where the traffic tie ups will be, the weather forcast , lay it in a voice track and just go home and have a Margeurita.

Vancouver BC: 2 million people and only 2 bridges--you do the math!

I usually listen to News 1130 (I like to catch up on the news and sports as well) when I am in the Lower Mainland--the border line-up reports have saved my bacon more than once. (CBC Radio One-AM 690 is great on weekends-especially the Vinyl Cafe programme.)

Most of the time, to avoid the (sometimes horrendous) traffic problems, I park my car and stay at the hotel next to the southernmost SkyTrain station (in Surrey! ) and take advantage of Vancouver's Trans-Link system. The SeaBus to North Van across Burrard Inlet is pretty cool.

On any given busy day in downtown VanGroovy, I can walk to my destination faster than the #5 Robson St. bus gets there. The bus has to slowly (approx 10-20 clicks, stopping every 100 metres) navigate around street performers, double parked cars, Hare Krishnas, CTV Weathergirls, traffic lights, drunken Granville St. party boys, and idiotic foriegn tourists(like me!)

According to the last area radio ratings, AM 730's 12+ listenership was VERY anemic, a 0.3. Only CBUF-FM, the CBC's French language outlet in Vancouver had fewer listeners.

You got me curious. I was just streaming AM 730. Gawd, can you imagine working that format? Those poor traffic jockeys. Their lot in life is to repeat and repeat fender benders on the Lougheed Highway in Burnaby. The station used to kick ass when it was the legendary CKLG.

So did 93 KHJ in L.A. I can't even find them (the current station on that frequency) on a google search today.

I think the only way it would work in Portland, Oregon, would be if it were also tied into TriMet.
And not just for the big stuff like the gas leak that shut down MAX earlier today - everything.
"Expect overcrowding on 12-Barbur due to a broken-down bus just after Capitol Hwy... the usual three buses back-to-back-to-back on the 72 out of Clackamas Transit Center..."

YOU MEAN ,,,thats right ! ..CKLG was on 730...mm?Last time I heard them they were Oldies...well that was about 3 years ago. Ill bet thier 12 + numbers were considerably better than 0.3 as an Oldies station.

CTV weather girls and Hare Krishnas huh? VanGroovy sounds like one big Star Wars Bar...well Portland pulls a good second or third to them I think.

Invent another format for the 21st Century.....

KEVP....K-electronic voice phenomenon. It might work. Have a team oh 4 or 5 persons who are interested in the Paranormal. Kinda like those TAPS people on Sci FI channel....Hey even better

KSFI...K- SI FI..........KSIF...mm? do a callsign search..here.... well lets see..all things Paranormal and UFOs and Armegeddonish...next big thing would be Dec 21, 2012 end of the Mayan calendar and all that... milk that one for all its worth, like Art Bell did for Y2K...National programming sources and local personages...organized programming, featured strange and spooky NW places , people and things repetative recorded programs playing overnights for fill. Makes for entertaining radio...LIKE a constant fix of the Twilight Zone 24/7/365.

Scare the crap outttah everybody, disseminate questionable information just believable enough and in such a way as to not get an FCC fine. Create hubub and scatalogical constructs meant to drag 35 plus persons across many quarter hours....Sort of a steady fix of Orson Wells and the Mercury Theatre....

Well, AM970 bet a bunch on COMEDY...

There WAS an all-traffic station in Southern California on the expanded band...Don't remember the licensed call letters, but I heard "K-Traffic" at night here in Phoenix. They changed format somewhere around two years ago or so...I think they now run an ethmic format.

KXL

It's still on the air.... Right?

KKTR 1650

One other big problem for all traffic radio is that people stuck in traffic want to hear about THEIR traffic tie up... not the one across town on some freeway they use twice a year to go to ball games. They want to hear about THEIR traffic NOW. And unless you have multiple choppers, nobody can be at the Banfield/I205 exchange; the Barbur curves, and 217 at 26 all at the same time. Traffic cars won't do it -- you get "yup, we're stuck in traffic here on the Banfield, no, don't know why."

[And to show how little people care about traffic other than their own, I had to look up the freeway the intersects the Banfield over there. Never use it.]

I think Randy in Eugene has it with KKTR 1650 in LA. They have been all traffic before AM730. I listen to 450.4875 MHz for my traffic updates in PDX.

Multiple choppers? I wish. Any choppers at all are beyond the budgets of today's radio stations. Even good-ol' fixed wing Cessna 172's are increasingly rare.

However...a diligent in-studio reporter with a phone, some scanners, and a net connection can make do.

I wish there were an all-traffic station here. I live in a market with terrible traffic. I'd buy an HD radio for the car for a service like that.

I take surface streets to go eight miles to and from work, and if there's a bad accident on the freeway, it can take up to an hour 'cause the traffic jumps off the freeway onto the side streets.

The minute-long radio traffic reports never get to talking about surface streets 'cause there's always so much bad news on the freeways.

Eastwood..that's hoe I do traffic in Eugene Mon-Wed. Thursday and Friday i actually go in a van and drive with all the crazies on the hiways. I used to spend 25 hrs a week on the hiways but due to gas prices now just 2 days. Still can do a good job with help from cell phone users, scanners and net

Forget all-traffic. Portland may be finally big enough to support an all-news station -- and traffic is the key.
A wise PD on Macadam once told me the commute times in Portland were too short to get a decent TSL out of all-news.
I think that anyone on the Banfield or the Sunset during normal 'rush' hours in 2007 would beg to differ.
What would it take? I submit that a decent FM would have a better chance than a big stick AM. With traffic every ten minutes and a nice chunk of news at the top and bottom, you could achieve the 'utility' effect and attract music listeners for a quarter or two.
You'd need an alliance with a TV station. KATU and Fisher would be best because you might also cut a deal with KOMO-AM in Seattle. They don't care much about Portland news, but a PDX station would need a decent source of SW Washington and Olympia news.
Also, maybe the WBZ model would work in Portland. Boston's monster station is all news from 5am to 7pm, then does local talk. If you're Entercom, here's a chance to find a Portland home for 'The Nightside Project.'
But the big requirement is committment. And we all know that's in very short supply in radio management these days - even for cheap-ass music formats that might take hold if given more than 90 days to prove themselves.
So don't hold your breath, Portland news fans. Point that AM antenna north to 1000 for your all-news fix -- unless the Mariners are playing.
RJ

That's the smart way to go, Andy. A few years ago, I did traffic from a Cessna 150. The good thing is that I learned to fly. The bad thing is that it took 15 minutes to get across the city I was in, and the information was outdated by that much. Looking at live web cams, listening to scanners, and having a network of listener/spotters you trust, and reward with the occasional coffee mug, may not have the cachet of the late Paul Brendle (KIRO), Bruce Wayne (KFI) or Bill Keane (KNX)...but it works. (When I'm driving in Portland, I seek out Lynn Masterson, Dana Jeffries, and Karen Tracy).

Rich, you're hired. Now get your gluteus back out here and get crackin'.

Growing up in the Bay Area, I used to listen to KGO (Lou Hurley and Len Durling (I think) in the KGO traffic planes) or to KCBS (Traffic with George Rask). The reports were always every 10 minutes. When I moved to Oregon 20+ years ago, I thought it was very funny when I first heard a traffic report in Eugene because I could never see Eugene with traffic issues. Today, I appreciate them. By the way, Andy does do a great job with his reports. I spent a couple days in the Vancouver BC area. Traffic is horrendous up there due to the lack of expressways. The only easy way from North Vancouver to South Vancouver is via city streets.

730 CKLG never had an Oldies format, as far as I know. They dumped Adult CHR (and the CKLG calls) in 2000, and became "Mojo 730" CHMJ, with a male-oriented Talk format.

I think you have to get permission from the Canadian government to change format and 650 was still Oldies.

When a broadcaster applies (to the CTRC) for a new frequency, they must include their proposed format.

I would imagine Tri-Met's dispatchers have a pretty vivid picture of what's going on out there, far beyond what one can see on the DOT's traffic-cam network.

Seattle's Metro Transit had an amazingly sophisticated radio dispatch system; I was still a Coast Guard radio operator when I noticed it in 1980 and marveled at its efficiency. I borrowed a scanner and listened entranced for a few hours, which included the dispatcher calmly talking a panicky driver through the cops picking up a bank robber who'd hopped on board. ("Oh, just get out and kick the tires for a minute; they'll be right there.")

Every few hours they broadcast a time check to the split second to their drivers, which passengers seated near the front could hear, after which the drivers would pick up their handsets to get the rest of the poop for their shift.

Having gotten stuck in Westmoreland for four hours during the ammonia leak that closed McLoughlin through Milwaukie at rush hour, I dearly wished for some kind of traffic report, and could find none. Managed to snag some idea on a sports bar's TV set when the evening news came on. Trying to loop around it, I was dismayed to find Johnson Creek Blvd. closed for an accident, and traffic from that point blithely being sent back into the gridlock.

An automated all-traffic format would work on HD3. CC could do it in an instant.

It could just rotate reports, with the freeways in "power" rotation.

oops it was probably 650 I was listening to. I remember it was a low band AM Canadian station. Might be I got mixed up with 30 - 40 years ago...LOL..when the Oldies were the Newies. CKLG would have been a CHR then, that I do remember about the station. CKLG came in routinely very well in Vancouver, Wa. Especially on a National "NC180" general coverage shortwave reciever.

And first time I have heard that you need permission to change formats from the govt in Canada. Not surprising considering the social structure up there. So does the govt subsidize some looser format like Traffic all day everyday and a 0.3 +12 number???

650 didn't exist 40 years ago but 'LG73 certainly did! Long ago and far away, I believe stations used to need to get permission from the FCC to change format. At least the format had to be filed with them. Actually, now that I think about it, that was a primary reason for not going Classical: If you did and there were any listeners, you could never change back!

I believe the future of traffic coverage, if we are not already there, is with traffic cams. In most big metros they are almost everywhere. The secret will be to get this info to the driver without having the driver distracted by it. Perhaps audible alerts based on what the cam sees. I believe this technology already exists and probably will be in most autos within a few years. Multiple choppers not needed.

Choppers are really kind of old school and limited in their capacity. Winter months has them grounded more than they are in the air anyway. They are however good for grocery store grand openings, for tossing out frozen turkeys to the people below!

Part 1:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=763766134917952213&q=%22WKRP+in+Cincinna ti%22+turkeys+away&total=3&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=2

Part 2:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8601776935839129776&q=%22WKRP+in+Cincin nati%22+turkeys+away&total=3&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1

Part 3:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4245464772524669502&q=%22WKRP+in+Cincin nati%22+turkeys+away&total=3&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

>I think Randy in Eugene has it with KKTR 1650 in LA. They have been all traffic before AM730

Not that it probably matters much in the greater scheme of things in the universe, but AM730 in Vancouver is constantly stating that their station is "the first of its kind, anywhere." And Wikipedia states that AM 730 is the first all-traffic station in North America. So either the folks at AM 730 are just not aware of K-Traffic in LA, or K-Traffic wasn't purely an all-traffic station.

Well, I can swear that KKTR was doing traffic reports at 9:45 at night!

Another Wikipedia "fact" that's to be taken with a grain of salt...

Darktemper,

Thanks for that WKRP link. " As God as my witness I thought Turkeys could fly !"

I always heard that this actually happened someplace. That some radio station did this once as a promotion. Does anyone know if this is an Urban Legend or not?

WQXI Atlanta.

Tons of stations did the turkey promotion with the actor in question! He used to go all over the country.

Stations did have to report their format to the FCC back in the day. Licensees also had to report their intent as to the amount(minutes per week, I believe) of news and public affairs, and how much was local vs. national.

I knew Craig would probably know !...

Its been years since I have seen that WKRP episode. Howard Hessman was great. He had the burned out DJ persona down to the max. Good actor who was on the radio for a time himself. They did a great bit with Bucky the engineer...him and two of his buddy nerds all talking at once...sounds like engineers doesnt it. Johnny Fever's coffee cup with every radio name he had ever used listed on it. Great stuff !

People outside of radio thought that show was fictional but it was really a documentary! There's an episode where a bomb at the transmitter takes the station off the air. Bailey Quarters is on the phone with a listener and you just hear her side of the conversation: "We're off the air.....How can we announce we're off the air if we're off the air?" Someone actually called me when the station was off the air and asked us to announce it!

I worked around several guys in the mid 70s @ KGON and KJRB who were very close to Howard Hessman's character on WKRP. The Les Nessman character was a bit over done at times, IMHO. The rest of them were spot on though.

One of my favorite funniest all time bits was the one in the Pilot or the episode right after the pilot where they were changing the format. DR. Johnny Fever was on the air playing the old format of beautiful music 4 back announce or whatever it was and gettin' itchie to play some rock and roll. He sequed this album cut...with 'You're having my Baby" by the Mormon Tabernacle Chior (a for real production by the MTC on an album BTW. ). Johnny looked over at the turn table with a horrified look, and scraped the tone arm across the MTC record then got crazy and went into some Def Leopard or Steppenwolf , something like that and did his wolfman rock jock delivery.

I will never forget that look he had on his face when the MTC was singing You're having my Baby...I had a belly laugh over that off and on for about 15 years of occasional reruns.

I've heard from several people I know that are or were in the radio business that WKRP was pretty close to the truth, about how a small radio station operated, same as a lot of cops I know say Barney Miller is the closest they have seen to an actual police detective unit.

the most boring radio show ive ever heard is on npr. the whole lineup stinks in mho.