Feed 49 Stations : L.A. Traffic Watch Split by 2 Firms

Rhonda Kramer fast-shuffles a deck of paper slips like a riverboat gambler and flips a switch that puts her on the air on KROQ, diving into the fast-flowing stream of banter between a couple of morning disc jockeys. She joins in the joking and segues quickly into “Well, you’d better watch out for the Hollywood Freeway today. . . .”

On the control console is a card to remind her what station she’s on. It could be any of seven.

As a typical Southern California weekday dawns, harried commuters are swearing and braking their way to work, relying on radio traffic reporters, like native guides savvy in the ways of migrating crocodiles, to warn them about blocked on-ramps, overturned trucks and congealed freeways.

Commuters listening to another station pick up traffic news from Fran Tunno. Few know that she’s sitting about 4 feet from Kramer.

Head Two Agencies

Other motorists hear the authoritative rumble of Paul Johnson, or maybe one of the other five announcers sitting in the same room with him, reading traffic reports in English and Spanish.

Kramer and Johnson head two agencies, LA Network and Metro Traffic, that supply traffic reports to virtually all local radio stations. The business did not exist 10 years ago, but today the two agencies feed at least some kind of service to 49 stations, leaving only one major radio station in the Los Angeles area--KIIS--that still does all of its own traffic reporting. KFI does almost all its own reports, supplemented by a teleprinter service from LA Network on weekends.

Four of the six airborne radio traffic watchers over Los Angeles work for the two agencies, with only KIIS and KFI flying their own reporters.

According to the Arbitron rating service, during an average quarter hour on a weekday morning, 227,600 listeners hear LA Network reports and 847,100 hear Metro Traffic broadcasters.

Located only a block apart in Hollywood, the rival agencies are a contrast in styles.

Ex-Opera Singer

Johnson is an urbane, silver-haired former opera singer who heads the local office of Metro Traffic, a Houston-based corporation that operates in 25 cities. Although jeans and T-shirts are common office wear for the unseen workers of radio, Johnson dresses like an executive in button-down collar shirts because he also appears on television. KNBC-TV is a client and a camera and lights hang from the ceiling above his broadcasting console.

His high tech 19th-floor studio is sparsely elegant and neatly corporate, with a postcard view of the Hollywood Hills. It feeds 34 stations in English and Spanish.

Kramer, 31, an intense, tousle-haired blonde, is a former late-night rock disc jockey turned entrepreneur. She founded the rival LA Network six years ago after a traffic-reporting career that included five months at Metro Traffic. She now has 14 clients, four of them non-paying public radio stations.

A cat sleeps on the chair in Kramer’s office and Kramer’s 2-year-old daughter, Aaron, sometimes toddles into the booth while she is broadcasting.

Kramer and Johnson both say that as traffic problems increase, traffic reports grow in importance to motorists and the demand for their services booms.

LA Network, which in the beginning operated seven hours a day during weekday rush hours, began operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week in June. Metro Traffic begins operating in Santa Barbara this month and the parent corporation plans to be on the air in Paris and Munich before the end of the year.

LA Network trades the service to stations in return for air time, packages the air time in blocks on groups of stations and re-sells it to advertisers. Kenny Green, an accountant who is Kramer’s business partner and husband, said LA Net takes in about $750,000 a year and makes “about 20%” profit.

Two Have 24 on the Air

Metro Traffic has 23 employees, 12 of them on the air. LA Network has 14, with 12 on the air.

David Sapperstein, president of Metro Traffic, refused to discuss the company’s finances, other than to say “we’re not losing money.” Metro Traffic supplies the service free and sells commercial time to advertisers. Its broadcasters simply read the commercials at the end of their reports.

A touchy point in the industry is use of reports, especially from the airborne reporters, which sound immediate but may actually be outdated. The aircraft, usually leased from private flying firms, are expensive. Metro Traffic’s jet helicopter costs $30,000 a month, LA Net’s two aircraft cost $250 a day. The economic pressure is to get as much information from the air, and as much work out of the reporters, as possible.

Radio news sources say this leads to airborne reporters describing events at locations they flew over earlier, and to control centers taping reports from those in the air and playing them later, when the situation has changed.

A mini-scandal erupted last year when one of Johnson’s helicopter reporters was caught sending a report from the ground at Van Nuys Airport, saying he was in the air.

Judd McIlvain, then a reporter for KTTV, Channel 11, won a Golden Mike award for a series on outdated traffic reports, including film of the chopper sitting on the ground while the reporter broadcast a report saying he was over Downey.

McIlvain, now a consumer advocate reporter for KCBS-TV, Channel 2, said he became interested in the topic when he heard a broadcast report from an airborne reporter about a traffic jam on a Santa Monica Freeway off-ramp. He was driving on the same ramp and there was no problem.

He pulled over and searched the sky, he said, “and I couldn’t see any plane either.”

He chartered a helicopter and followed the traffic reporters around the sky for three months before airing his report in February. The centerpiece of the series was footage of a helicopter sitting on the ground, while the sound track picked up reporter Jorge Jarrin, broadcasting as if he were in the air.

Johnson said neither he nor Jarrin would discuss the incident. Sapperstein said the crew had actually been over the scene some time earlier and witnessed the events they described, but they landed early.

Kramer accuses Metro Traffic of using outdated tapes, which Johnson denies.

One of the reasons she left Metro Traffic to start her own agency, she said, is that the service once played a tape of her describing traffic in the rain, when the sun had been shining for half an hour. “I thought I’d never work again.”

Johnson insists that Metro Traffic rarely uses any tape more than 5 minutes old, which he and Kramer both agree is about the outer life expectancy of an accurate traffic description. Kramer said she plays tapes only for public radio stations, which get LA Net free as a public service, with the understanding that they will broadcast them in less than 5 minutes or discard them.

News executives of client stations say for the most part they are pleased with the accuracy of both services.

The traffic reporters work in an atmosphere of sensory overload.

Information pours in from radio scanners that monitor California Highway Patrol and other police frequencies. A teletype system links them with Caltrans and a Los Angeles city street traffic monitoring bureau. Telephone calls pour in from listeners--especially those with car phones--and reports come in from the helicopters and planes.

The broadcasters also monitor the stations they are responsible for, to be ready to respond to cues. Kramer sometimes wears a large pair of earphones over a small pair so she can listen to two stations simultaneously. Moving around the office she stays tuned through earphones attached to a radio on her belt.

Between on-air reports, Johnson marshals his troops, supervising the five or six other broadcasters working in booths around him, directing the timetables of the two aircraft, and ordering coverage of special events, like the Lakers’ victory parade.

Kramer’s assistants hand her written notes. Her fingers constantly shuffle the pack, editing out those more than 5 minutes old. Johnson watches a computer screen, on which assistants file brief bulletins. The screen scrolls down almost continuously as he switches from station to station, keeping track of who he’s talking to by the red and green lights above each station’s switch.

Fit the ‘Personality’

“Everyone’s nightmare is realizing as you go to sign off that you don’t know what to say because you’ve forgotten what station you’re on,” Kramer said.

Another demand is to fit the “personality” that each station tries to project to appeal to its targeted audience. The ability to fit in with one station’s image, and then shift instantly to another, is prized, Kramer said.

“There are stations that want you to joke with the disc jockeys, and others who want you to sound very businesslike. Jokes that one station thinks are funny don’t go over so well on some other station. You hit that switch and you get in step.”

Johnson tells the same story. “You absolutely have to switch personality with the stations, and never let your mind wander. I have a great Wolfman Jack impression that I can do on rock stations, that I would absolutely never do on someplace like KJOI.”