Non-com WAMU (88.5 FM), the Washington area’s top-rated
station, gets its up-to-the-minute news about local roads from reporters in
. . . Florida. And Philadelphia.
Jerry Edwards, the venerable traffic reporter who does the
station’s morning updates, describes the daily fight of the lights from his
home in the Sunshine State’s Sarasota. Dave Solomon, who handles afternoons,
broadcasts from up the interstate in Philly.
Radio stations have long used “voice tracking,” a technique
that makes a distant disc jockey sound like he or she is broadcasting locally.
But traffic reporting — a vital service for rush-hour drivers — has generally
remained a local affair. Most Washington area stations get their updates from a
company called Total Traffic Network, whose reporters work out of a regional
office in downtown Silver Spring.
Even so, technology makes it possible to produce traffic
reports far, far from the madding crowd. Edwards’s home studio in Sarasota is
outfitted with computers and other equipment that he says gives him access to
the same cameras and government traffic information that reporters in the
Washington area use. Traffic tips come in from listeners via a Washington phone
line that forwards calls to him. High-quality audio links make it sound as if
he’s describing conditions from down the street, not from down South, 960 miles
away.
WAMU, a non-commercial station that carries local news and
talk programs as well as NPR programming, has not said on the air where Edwards
and Solomon are when they’re reporting. But it leaves a strong impression that
its traffic reporters are right in the middle of the action, what with
preliminary banter — “Hi, Jerry,” “Hi, Dave” — and patter about local
conditions (“Be careful out there in this rain,” etc.).
The whole thing gets Jim Farley, of rival news station WTOP
(103.5 FM), about as riled up as a commuter stuck in a rush-hour jam.
“It matters” where the reporters are, says Farley, WTOP’s
vice president of news and programming. His station, which battles WAMU for
ratings supremacy, employs its own staff of 20 full- and part-time traffic
reporters who broadcast traffic conditions every 10 minutes around the clock.
Farley says every member of his traffic staff experiences
local conditions every day. “They drive in it, see it, feel it,” he said.
At the very least, Farley says, WAMU should disclose to its
listeners that its traffic reports are coming from out of town. “Not doing that
is deceptive and misleading,” he says. “It’s not honest reporting.”
