Point A to point B
If you tune in to WWJB (1450 AM) or WXJB (99.9 FM) radio on any weekday morning, chances are you will hear the crisp tones and clear pitches of veteran traffic reporter Chuck Whitaker.
Many don’t give much thought to who owns the voice of the traffic reporter on the radio until he becomes the voice of reason, assisting commuters around accident scenes or bottleneck situations that could mean the difference in arriving to work on time.
Whitaker guides commuters in several Florida counties and Baltimore from his cozy office inside the WWJB building in downtown Brooksville. Whitaker has been delivering on-point traffic reports for 46 years. Yet, he humbly admits that when he heard his taped voice for the first time, at just 19, he didn’t recognize himself.
He was approached by a major radio station while employed with the City of Baltimore to try his skill at traffic reporting from a helicopter. Fearlessness and youth seem to go hand-in-hand, which might explain why Whitaker jumped at the idea to hover over the city and “wing” a traffic report without a second thought.
“They strapped me in and removed the doors,” Whitaker said, which had him a little nervous. “They told me it gets hot up there.”
After doing three fake reports and taking some pictures to show off later, Whitaker was back on the ground and escorted into the radio station where pictures of his favorite DJs decorated the walls.
“We walked into the program director’s office and he started this tape of a guy doing a traffic report,” Whitaker remembered. “I said, ‘That guy sounds pretty good.’ And he said, ‘That’s you!'”
The program director, who is now one of Whitaker’s closest friends, was amazed that Whitaker had never done a report before. “Heck, I had never done anything thing like this before,” Whitaker remembered telling him. “I’d never been in a helicopter, never in a radio station. This was it.”
That was the start of his career in radio traffic reporting. A chance opportunity set the foundation for a journey that took Whitaker from the confined seat in a helicopter, flying over Baltimore, to the face behind the traffic reports heard in several Florida counties and other syndicated stations across the country.
Throughout the years, Whitaker went on to pursue different avenues with his traffic reporting, including starting his own company in 1979 in Baltimore called Metro Traffic. The business took on every radio station they could all over the country. “LA, New York, every major city had Metro Traffic,” he said.
Now, Whitaker delivers his report five days a week from a desk in the corner of an office at WWJB Radio on Fort Dade Ave. in Brooksville. Now named Traffic Team Network, Whitaker can be heard Monday through Friday from 4 a.m. until 9 a.m. from WWJB and WXJB locally, among other counties in central Florida.
He multi-tasks well, using the computer monitor tuned into Baltimore in real time, and scanners that track county streets in Hernando, Pasco, Citrus and Sumter.
And Whitaker makes it look easy as he carries on conversations while keeping one ear tuned in. He has learned through the years how to filter what is important and what isn’t, stopping for slight pauses to jot down a note or two.
Spend a few minutes with him and the passion is evident through a personality that is a natural fit for on-air broadcasting. His delivery – whether the spontaneous traffic report or a pre-scripted marketing blurb from one of the sponsors – is always right on point.
Radio is dependent on active advertisers to stay on the air, Whitaker said, and Traffic Team Network has many high-profile clients that receive several plugs, reaching thousands of listeners daily. It isn’t cheap, but dollar for dollar, broadcast advertising works, especially during the prime hours, like early and late day commutes, when listeners tune in.
While some radio media sources have been hit by a struggling economy, and technology like MP3s, iPods and Sirius Radio have changed how listeners get their music, traffic reporting tends to keep loyal followers.
Commuters need to know minute by minute the conditions of the roadways, Whitaker said. And radio broadcast is mobile and convenient.
Though he has spent his entire adult life doing radio, it wasn’t his life dream when he was young. Instead, he had ambitions to be a detective with the police force and earned his degree in criminology. But the starting salary from the radio job was beyond his rational ability to ignore.
“And I work directly with local law enforcement,” he said.
The series of events that landed him in his present situation after 46 years is a story all its own. Through the years, he has met celebrities who came in and out of the station including Carroll O’Connor, Heather Locklear and Redd Foxx, to name a few.
Yet Whitaker’s rise in the fast world of radio broadcasting, celebrity guests and big money never tarnished his grounded values.
“I still drive the same kind of car today,” he said with a chuckle. “I drove a hot Mustang then and I drive a hot Mustang now.”
“I used to see the traffic helicopter as I walked home from school,” Whitaker remembered. “And I used to say to my friends that it looked like a pretty cool job.”
He went on the air for the first time on June 16, 1969, and has been on the air ever since.
“I’ve never had another job,” he said.
Hernando Today correspondent Kim Dame can be reached at [email protected]
