Re: Labor Board Issues Three Complaints Against WW1

[Eli Sherer <eli@tiac.net>]

Covering a number of bases here...

I've been watching a lot of this back and forth over the price paid to 
traffic reporters and have a somewhat close perspective on the matter... or 
at least I did when I worked for SmartRoutes.

First, the salaries or hourly rates paid to anyone working on the 
SmarTraveler project are in a  sense "dictated" by the contract with the 
state itslef. No one can be hired or have additional hours billed to the 
project without approval by the state as it's a state contract and 
everything is subject to audit. In other words, what's paid to the people 
gathering information or recording messages are all under the scrutiny of 
the person managing the contract.

As for the base rate paid to the air talent, who are not necessarily the 
same people as the SmarTravelver Traveler Information Managers (data 
gatherer's) or the Announcers, that's pretty much dictated by what the 
market will bear. In this regard it's very difficult. Should they be paid 
as much as a disc jockey on a 'ZLX or 'BCN, I can't really say. They're not 
reading from a program log, much of what's said is off the cuff ad-lib 
stuff, even though there's a list of traffic incidents in front of them, 
anyone who thinks they can write own exactly the order or substance of what 
you're going to put into a 45 second (OK, I never took less than a 
minute;-)) traffic report is fooling themselves.

One thing I will take a stand on, is whether the people who fly should get 
something extra. Sure you get the glory of being the 'copter guy, but 
there's a life risk involved that only since 9-11 do people really think 
about. Personally I went through only two "forced landings," one "bad 
landing" (a practice auto-rotation that went awry), and one where I didn't 
like the sound of the engine and it quit just after we touched down. Hazard 
pay, I don't know... but it sure better be more than $12-15 an hour (not to 
mention allowing them to buy more insurance than normal).

On the last note about you get what you pay for... someone once told me 
when I was starting out as a traffic reporter that "this isn't a job you're 
going to stay with forever... this is not a career thing." In those days,, 
20 years ago, it was true to a certain degree... but things have changed. 
Sure there are lots of people reporting traffic just so they can get a leg 
into a radio or TV career. There's a morning news anchor in DC on WJLA who 
started out as one of my co-workers at Metro and went on to "bigger and 
better things." But even in his day as a traffic guy, you knew his heart 
was elsewhere. What WW1 and others need to look at is the cost of 
re-training new talent over and over (as the revolving door spins), vs. 
having some true believers stay with the job for a while. I've been playing 
in traffic for about 21 years now and moved up only because I wanted to 
grow with the industry. That sort of dedication should be recognized.

I'm not pro or against unions, but you everyone has to realize what they're 
looking for. If someone's doing a good job, reward them... find them better 
work and more money. If they aren't, is it really worth the kind of image 
that a bad traffic report produces (not knowing road names or directions) 
just because someone says you have to keep them or pay them more? My wife 
and I used to argue this all the time... I'd hear a bad traffic report on 
the radio and she'd say "they don't care, the talent gets their name on the 
air, Metro makes their :10 second barter money and the radio station 
doesn't have to pay out of pocket." Unfortunately, she's more right than 
wrong... but can you imagine the folks at CBS saying "it doesn't matter 
what Dan Rather says on the air, we've got a newscast to sell here!" 
Without credibility, there's nothing to sell!

Just my 2 cents...


>Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2002 15:07:13 -0400 (EDT)
>From: Garrett Wollman <wollman@lcs.mit.edu>
>Subject: Re: RE: Labor Board Issues Three Complaints Against WW1
>
><<On Wed, 7 Aug 2002 13:50:43 -0400, Dave Faneuf <tklaundry@juno.com> said:
>
> > If you accept anything less than top talent (that includes the knowledge,
> > ability and willingness to gather accurate information just like in news)
> > then what you end up with is exactly what you have now, fictional
> > accounts of traffic in Boston.
>
>It's not (or shouldn't be) the air talent's job to gather the traffic
>information.  That's the job of the ``phone force'' call center,
>scanner monitors, and the highway department.  Listen to a Chicago
>traffic report some time: there are traffic speed monitors on all of
>the expressways, and IDOT provides travel times for major
>sources/destinations to all the stations (or their outsourced traffic
>services).  Since Mass Highway and the Turnpike Authority are
>apparently not prepared to provide this information, the only way to
>come up with it is to go out and actually observe the conditions --
>and you don't do that sitting in a studio in Cambridge.
>
>Now, where the talent does bear some responsibility is in calling
>roads by their correct names.  Every day in PM rush, you'll hear the
>traffic reporters telling you ``Memorial Drive is backed up to the
>Longfellow'' -- which would be a serious backup if it were actually
>true.  (PM backups on Memorial Drive start at Western Ave. and tail
>back eastward from there, so backed up all the way to the Longfellow
>would be two miles of solid traffic.)  Of course, what they actually
>mean to say is ``Land Boulevard is backed up to the Longfellow'' --
>but they rarely if ever do so.  (I'll forgive them for getting Charles
>St./Embankment Rd. wrong, since almost nobody knows those names and
>even the MHD, BTD, and the MDC get them wrong most of the time.)
>
>- -GAWollman
>
>------------------------------
>To be fair, it is impossible to give a useful traffic update in less than
>two or three minutes.  Just saying "The Bourne and the Sagamore are a mess"
>at 5:30pm on a summertime Friday is a throughly useless bit of info.  A big
>DUH! goes to that statement...of course it's gonna be backed up then - it
>ALWAYS is.  What about suggestions for alternate routes, specific locations
>of slowdowns, new roadway changes with the Big Dig?   You can't give that
>kind of info in a 30 second soundbite.
>
>It's like those portable message boards they put at an soon-to-be
>construction site that say "Construction, Expect delays".  A hell of a lot
>of good that does me.  How about a sign a mile back that says "Take X road
>for detour"?  That'd be a lot more useful in getting around a 120-car
>backup on Rt.109 or something like that.
>
>
>Didn't they go and change the name of Embankment?  (That's the jog
>between Beacon and Storrow, right?)
>
>Bill O'Neill
>
>Dave writes:
>In a perfect world the air talent would just sit there and have all the 
>information presented to him/her.  The reality is that is not how it works 
>and you need an experienced person who knows how to effectively work the 
>phones, develop a good working relationships with various departments as 
>well as do exceptional airwork.   Hire someone looking for their "big 
>break" for $13 an hour and you aren't going to get the expertise to be 
>able to do the job right.