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Traffic troubles for my ears
Corporate sponsorship on KYW radio
I’ve ignored the trend of corporate names being added to stadiums — I’m not that into sports, so I don’t see them, and I don’t really care. But I listen to KYW Newsradio 1060 all the time, especially in the car. I know advertising is necessary to keep it on the air. But the amount — and particularly the placement — of corporate sponsorship is getting to be a bit much. When your newscast starts sounding like every segment is a new stadium, maybe it’s time to scale it back.
The news is delivered in the Penn Medicine Studios (because your life is worth Penn Medicine). That may or may not be true, but at least they only say that twice an hour. There’s a new sponsor on a segment that is heard not once, not twice, but six times an hour: the traffic report.
Sometimes, a sponsor is announced right before the traffic report begins, as in Traffic is brought to you by…, and that’s to be expected. This is radio after all. But now, at the end of each update, we’re no longer told that it’s coming from the KYW 24-Hour Traffic Center — that was both accurate and relatively easy to say. Now, the intrepid bearer of depressing deets for drivers is reporting from the TruMark Financial Credit Union 24-Hour Traffic Center.
The what?
A corporate center, and one named for a corporation that has nothing to do with traffic in any way. It might be more tolerable if it somehow had something to do with traffic or cars — Just Tires, perhaps, or Pep Boys.
The TruMark Financial Credit Union 24-Hour Traffic Center. It is as difficult to type as it is to say. The new name hasn’t rolled off the tongue of any of the traffic reporters yet either, as the old name did. Maybe the reporters just need time. Good thing they’ll get to practice, six times an hour. And yes, I know they have (had?) a sponsored tag asking drivers to help by becoming an AT&T Phone Force Tipster, but it wasn’t said after every report as the new name is, and at least that was catchy.
What if KYW decides to do this with everything? We’d enjoy Steve Nikazy, at the anchor desk in the Scotts’ Weed Killer “Reporters’ Roundup” Studio; Tony Hanson reporting from the Dunkin’ Donuts Courts Cubicle; Amy Feldman illuminating listeners from the Legalzoom.com Lounge. What if it escapes the studios and seeps into the rest of the building? The USPS Mailroom. The Planet Fitness Stairway. Or the Poo-Pourri Unisex Bathroom.
What’s next, an advertiser in the midst of giving the time? I think that iconic announcement would be ruined if they added a corporate sponsor:
The KYW TIMEX Newstime at the tone, 10 p.m.
That’s totally ridiculous.
It would definitely be Rolex.
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