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What’s the Point of Traffic Updates on the Evening News?
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So I was watching Action News on vacation, the 5 p.m. show, and they brought on some lady to do the traffic. I think it was Alysa Bainbridge, who apparently started in August of 2024. This was something Jessica Boyington used to do as well before she departed, traffic on the evening news in addition to the morning news.
If you’ve spent five minutes living in the Delaware Valley, you know that when it comes to traffic here, “everything is fucked, everybody sucks,” as Fred Durst once famously said. On most occasions, it’s safe to assume that 1) The Schuylkill Expressway is a parking lot, 2) I-95 is crawling, and 3) PennDOT closed down a bunch of lanes on a road they’re not even working on. You should give yourself extra time for your commute, and bring something to garrote yourself with.
That being said, what’s the point of doing the traffic on the 4 p.m. or 5 p.m. news? Morning traffic updates are one thing, when you’re at home preparing for the day. Maybe Fox 29 is playing in the background and Bob Kelly is going over the latest double jelly donut jammo while you eat breakfast and/or get all of your kids’ shit together. You hear Bob say that there’s a jackknifed tractor trailer at Woodhaven Road, so you go down to Academy instead. No problem. You take that information into your morning commute.
But the target audience of the 4 p.m. or 5 p.m. traffic update is… who, exactly? Are there people wrapping up their work day, getting ready to drive home, and turning on the television before getting in their car? Are they streaming Action News on their phone? That seems unlikely, and is unlikely, based on this totally scientific poll:
88.1% of about 1,000 respondents said they’ve never turned on the evening news for a traffic update. Not now, not ever.
More context:
Back in the day, at channel 3, Bob used to work a split shift. He would come in early and do the traffic in the morning, go home, then come back for the 4 p.m. news. Horrific schedule. At some point around 2011 or 2012, I want to say, that stopped, and he only came in to do the morning shift. The evening traffic hit disappeared entirely and hasn’t come back in the 13-14 years since.
Mind you, this was about a year or two after Waze came out. Google Maps was around. KYW News Radio was doing traffic and weather on the twos for many years prior, and GPS systems were still a thing before smart phones completely took over, so it wasn’t like television was the lone source of traffic information back then. What was stark in contrast is that TV didn’t have the capacity to convey real-time traffic with the same frequency as radio or GPS, nor did it have the crowdsourcing capabilities of the apps.
When you ask around, that’s what people use. They use Waze, Google Maps, Apple Maps, and they tune the dial to 103.9 FM. They also work from home or hybrid schedules, maybe some commuting via regional rail or other mass transit. You have separate things moving the needle in the same direction, one, the technological advancement delivered via smartphone, and two, the post-COVID changes to commuter culture.
Here’s a third one –
Younger people just don’t watch TV news very much these days.
In a 2024 Pew poll, only 8% of adults between age 18 and 29 said they preferred television as their main news source. The number jumped to 18% between ages 30 and 49, basically Millennials and the younger portion of Gen X, then respondents above age 50 were anywhere from 42% to 60% in their preference for TV news.
Conversely, 86% of those in the 18-29 age range said their preference for news was a digital device. And across all demographics, only 33% of respondents said that they “often” get their news from television, compared to 57% for digital devices.
So if they’re not getting their news from TV, it’s safe to say they’re not getting their traffic from TV either.
The one thing that would justify doing traffic updates at 4 p.m. and 5 p.m., even 6 p.m., on the local news, is sponsorship. Action News ran a couple of full screen graphics on Monday at 5 p.m., Tamala Edwards read some copy over the slates, or maybe just adlibbed, and then they bounced to commercial with a short clip noting that this 30-second segment was sponsored by Dunkin Donuts:
If you can sell the segment as “traffic brought to you by corporation X,” you make some money off of it. And cash rules everything around us, C.R.E.AM. In the Monday example, they didn’t need a traffic reporter, they just voiced over the graphics. There’s only so much commercial time in television news, so anything you can sell to a sponsor is worthwhile, as goofy as it might seem from a “do we actually need this?” perspective.
Case in point, we used to have a “mobile weather lab” at channel 3 that always broke down. It was the worst, reminiscent of Adam Sandler’s “piece of shit” car, but apparently the sponsor was paying a lot of money to get their name out there, so we prioritized the lab and found ways to use it and keep everyone happy, even if it meant parking the thing and sending a separate live truck to get Kathy Orr on television, standing in front of the lab. Then we joked about the “immobile weather lab” while slaving away on weekends and overnight shift.
If, however, you aren’t making money from traffic hits on the local news at 4 p.m. and 5 p.m., then it seems pointless. We’re doing evening traffic updates? For who? FOR WHAT?
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com