With gas prices on the rise and new policies and ideas on the table, it's time to look at how we get around. We all need to get someplace and we use many different modes of transportation to do so. As we kick off 2011 at OnMilwaukee.com, we're taking an in-depth look at how we get around with a special "Transportation Week," featuring all kinds of stories about how Milwaukee gets where it's going. So, buckle up, hop on and all aboard.
News, weather and traffic -- it's the familiar formula, along with sports, for morning TV and radio in Milwaukee. No, we're not Chicago with its chronic crawl to work on the expressways every weekday.
In fact, back in the late 1980s, when I wrote about transportation for the old Milwaukee Journal, a Wisconsin Department of Transportation traffic expert joked to me that we had a "rush minute," rather than a rush hour.
But stations up and down the TV and radio dials offer regular reports on travel times in both morning and afternoon "drive time," a term that is defined by traffic.
Lisa Manna spent three years doing the morning traffic on Channel 4. She left the station in 2009 to spend time with her new child, but still fills in from time to time.
She's a big backer of radio traffic information.
"Radio traffic is critical, no matter what time of day it is," she told me. "When I’m in my car, that’s when I’m most concerned about traffic."
And TV traffic?
"It plays its most important role when something major is happening on the roads," Manna said. "And nobody can say when that will be."
While things generally flow pretty steadily between 5 and 7 a.m. weekdays, add a little snow to the mix and even experienced winter drivers have problems that slow down the entire system.
Mike Conway does traffic in the mornings for Milwaukee's Clear Channel radio stations -- including WISN-AM (1130) and WMIL-FM (106.1) -- along with Channel 6. He sees a new connection with Milwaukee commuters thanks to Twitter.
"I don't always have to seek out traffic information," he said, explaining that it's tweeted to him at his personal account @mikeconway03 or the Milwaukee Clear Channel Twitter feed, @totaltrafficmke.
"What I like about traffic reporting is the ability to interact" he said.
Of course, he also has a full bank of resources, from Department of Transportation cameras around the freeway system and DOT updates, to a data from a private company, Inrix, which contracts nationally with Clear Channel's Total Traffic Network.
"Obviously, our congestion doesn’t compare to a Chicago," he said. "But there is a real-life need for it."
And Conway hears it every day from listeners interested in "how long it’s going to take me to get from point A to point B."
Traffic is a part of the marketing campaigns of many radio and TV stations, a key component of the information package they're selling.
More valuable than the endless stream of closed hair salons and canceled church services that run without any order during snow "storms," traffic reporting can be important when, as Manna says, when something major is happening.
What do you think? Is traffic overdone by Milwaukee broadcasters? Or is it a vital bit of information for you?
On TV: Not surprisingly, a lot of us were tuned in for the Packers' win over the Bears on Sunday, just about half of us, according to final overnight numbers from Nielsen Media Research. A 49.8 rating is nearly 50 percent of all southeast Wisconsin TV homes. The game had a 73 share, meaning 73 percent of households where the TV was on were tuned to the game.
- Deadline Hollywood reports that Nickelodeon has ordered a ninth season of "SpongeBob SquarePants." The 26-episode season will air in 2012.
- John Roberts is leaving CNN for Fox News Channel.
- Chicago media watcher Robert Feder has launched his new blog at timeout.com.
A last chance for "V": ABC finally launches the second season of the only TV series with sets inspired by the Milwaukee Art Museum, the alien invasion drama "V" at 8 tonight on Channel 12.
ABC is gambling that this second season will do better than the first, and let's hope there's a bit more action than that painfully slow first run. Jane Badler, who was the queen of the evil aliens in the original "V," back in the 1980s, is being added to the cast.
Here's a recap of last season, and 4 minutes pretty much does the job:
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
