Traffic Reporter on Off-Ramp to Retirement

One of Los Angeles’ most familiar voices, veteran traffic reporter and weatherman Bill Keene, plans to call it a career after more than 35 years on local radio and television.

Keene, 67, who has been talking about marine layers and hazy sunshine at KNX-AM (1070) since 1957, said Friday that he will retire at the end of May. For 18 years beginning in 1957, he served as the weatherman on then-KNXT-TV Channel 2’s local newscasts, including the ground-breaking Big News with Jerry Dunphy.

“I’m just getting old,” Keene said. “It’s time to step aside and let some of the younger folks do it.”

Known for his folksy wit and deliberately bad puns, Keene began offering traffic reports at KNX in 1976. Beginning with the summer Olympics in 1984, when massive traffic snarls were predicted for the Los Angeles area, Keene has also delivered quick weather and traffic updates on Channel 2 during breaks in CBS’ morning news program. He will leave that job at the same time.

Part of the reason for his decision to quit broadcasting, Keene said, is that computerized traffic technology has taken much of the joy out of his job. Keene now has access to the “CalTrans Christmas Tree”--a computerized system that immediately shows how well or poorly traffic is flowing on all local freeways. In the good old days, Keene said, he would have to spend his mornings and afternoons listening to radios and scanners for accidents and funny incidents--such as a load of live chickens that had just fallen off a truck--that became fodder for his puns and word play.

“Ninety-nine percent of the fun has gone out of the traffic reporting,” said Keene, who for the last several years has also relied on a network of listeners with cellular phones for tips on traffic tie-ups. “I don’t have much of the good stuff anymore. It’s become a job.”

Keene, whose wife Louise appears as a guest actor on the soap opera “The Young and the Restless,” also owns a house in Tucson, Ariz., and he said that he and his wife will split time between their two homes. He added that he’ll spend the bulk of his newfound free time hitting the golf links.

“My golf game has really suffered because of work,” said Keene. “And I can’t let that happen.”