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Reporting traffic on WSVN 7 in Miami

by | Feb 17, 2024 | Television

Inspired by my involvement in a grant-funded project to digitize all 26,000 videotapes in the archives of Arkansas PBS, I recently dug into storage containers for videotapes of my own work which haven’t been viewed in decades. They included a few tapes from the brief period of my career when I worked as a traffic reporter for radio and TV stations in Richmond, Virginia, then Miami, Florida in 1997 and 1998.

I have long been digitizing audio tapes of my work and posting those here, but hadn’t made an effort to preserve videotapes. The traffic reports certainly don’t have the historic value of important news stories I’ve covered or the treasure trove of material Arkansas PBS shipped off to be digitized, but after working in the seemingly calm world of public broadcasting for the past 21 years, it’s kind of funny seeing reports I anchored for WSVN, channel 7, the Fox affiliate in Miami. It had the most dramatic presentation of any TV station in the market.

What I appreciate about the video below is that it’s an unedited segment of “Today in Florida,” the station’s morning news program, including three of my traffic reports. Most other tapes I have only include my reports. I would follow weather every 15 minutes, updating traffic conditions while showing live helicopter footage of accidents and backups. I was off-camera. The first report shows a dramatic shot of a vehicle on its side, blocking all lanes in one direction on a major roadway.  

South Florida had terrible traffic congestion, with morning rush backups beginning before 6 a.m. WSVN aimed to give people information they would need about potential problems in their morning commute before leaving for work.

I had only been in Miami about a month at that point and received a quick orientation on the complicated layout of roadways and the lingo before starting on the air. I was working for Metro Networks, a provider of traffic reports for radio and TV stations nationwide, first at its Richmond office, then was able to transfer to Miami. Needless to say, it was a challenge arriving in a new market and trying to talk about the highway system like a local. 

I didn’t find reporting traffic to be as interesting as reporting news. Most days were very redundant with backups in the same places at the same times with a few scattered accidents mixing things up. But working at Metro Networks gave me a lot of good exposure, not only on WSVN, but also being heard at one time or another on about half of the English language radio stations in South Florida. One of those was WIOD, Newsradio 610, where six months after arriving in Miami, I was hired as a news anchor and reporter. 

I’ve never had any nostalgia for my short lived traffic reporting days, but learning recently just how badly videotapes deteriorate after a couple of decades, especially in poor conditions like what I subjected these to while moving around the country, I knew that if I wanted to preserve this footage, I should take action as soon as possible. These tapes weren’t digitized using the most professional standards — I simply slid them into a VCR I still have and dubbed them onto DVDs, which were then ripped to MP4 files. The project I’ve been involved with at Arkansas PBS is using a company that follows a much more formal archival process.

PRESERVING ARKANSAS PBS ARCHIVE

Last year, Arkansas PBS received a $1.13 million grant from the Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council to digitize all 26,000 audio and videotapes that have been saved over the years. Some are 2-inch videotapes going back to when the station went on the air in 1966. I served on a committee that heard proposals from vendors, then selected the George Blood company, which is now digitizing those tapes. It’s a fascinating process with the deteriorating media being carefully handled using an archival process to assess the tapes, then record them into a digital format to get the best footage possible. The first truckload of carefully-wrapped tapes was shipped out on Nov. 27, generating a lot of excitement.

Included in that first shipment were many tapes featuring episodes of “Arkansas Week,” which I now oversee as part of my duties here. Last year, the program marked its 40th anniversary.  Many of the most important stories in the state during that time were discussed in the program, so it’s an important record of Arkansas history. The footage will eventually be available through the website of the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. In December, a second shipment left our building.

On Feb. 15, Arkansas PBS received a hard drive featuring the first digitized footage, which was compared with an inventoried list of tapes that had been sent. Needless to say this has been an exciting project, especially for employees here like David Elmore, who for years has been setting aside and watching over these tapes.

More pallets filled with tapes are in position and will soon be part of a third truckload of tapes to be shipped. For me, having been involved in small personal projects to digitize tapes of my own or radio stations I’ve worked for, it has been a joy seeing this happen on such a large and professional scale.

Trey Stafford discusses growing up in radio

by | Dec 28, 2023 | Radio

It was a joy listening to an interview with Trey Stafford, a boss of mine 33 years ago at KDXY-FM 104.9. An institution in northeast Arkansas broadcasting, he was featured in the latest episode of Paragould Podcast with Jared Pickney. Trey shared details about beginning in radio at the age of 9 on his hometown station KPCA-AM in Marked Tree. More than 50 years later, he dominates morning radio in Jonesboro.

There are several great stories that harken back to what small town radio used to be like, including when — at the age of 10 — he was called to sign the daytime-only station back on the air late one night to warn people of a potential tornado. At the age of 14, when he didn’t become a paid employee as promised, he left the station in a huff, but advanced his career. Trey’s life story is fascinating and I’m glad it was documented in this podcast. Give it a listen!

In addition to co-hosting the morning show with Jim Frigo at what is today known as 104.9 The Fox, Trey is President/ General Manager of Jonesboro Radio Group. He not only survived a tumultuous era of deregulation, he adapted and rose to the top in his market.

What I appreciated in 1990, as I note on the page detailing my experiences at the station,  was the respect he gave a 19-year-old with just a little bit of experience by offering me my first full-time radio position, complete with health insurance and other benefits. I’ve only seen him once since leaving Jonesboro in 1993, but am confident his success is thanks to his broadcasting business savvy and a strong personality that radiates into the community. 

Traveling to see the legendary Al Green!

by | Dec 22, 2023 | Music

It was a spontaneous decision made the moment Glen Hooks and I saw that Al Green was going to be performing near St. Louis on Nov. 25 — we had to go. Among the top musicians to emerge from Arkansas, I can’t begin to say how much his music has meant to me. The concert was the final one of the year for Rev. Green, now 77. While it would mean a five-hour drive each way from Little Rock, Glen immediately took out his phone and bought three tickets, including one for his girlfriend Michelle Henderson.

What did we think of the show? Let us tell you all about it! I’d recently bought a dash cam for my car and recorded our post-concert thoughts during the drive back, mixing that with some good ol’ cell phone footage to provide highlights and analysis.

Maybe you’ll find this mashup of music and thoughts annoying, but I thought I’d try something new. If you’d like to just see the performance, there’s footage of the entire show recorded by other people that can be found on YouTube.