Shadow Traffic

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Shadow Broadcast Services is a traffic reporting service owned by Westwood One.

The company had its start in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1975 as an informal service provided over citizens' band radio and took its name from the handle, or nickname, of its orginator, Michael Lenet. He called himself the "Silver Shadow" and soon began providing the traffic information he gathered to radio stations in Philadelphia.

In 1978, the company's first expansion was to Chicago, Illinois where its operations were headed by Gary Lee. On December 3, 1979, it went on the air in New York City, the nation's largest broadcast market. The general manager of the New York office (which was actually located in Union, New Jersey) was Fred Feldman, a 16-year veteran helicopter traffic reporter on WOR.

Among the original air staff in New York were Donna Fiducia, George W. Forman, Susan Murphy, Joe Nolan and Bernie Wagenblast. Murphy also served as program director and Joe Biermann was the operations manager.

Most New York City stations subscribed to Shadow's services, including WCBS and WOR, who both continued to fly traffic-reporting helicopters. Shadow's New York office also service numerous suburban stations in New Jersey, Connecticut, Long Island and the Hudson Valley. In addition to on-air reporters, information was also provided via a teletype to stations which preferred to use their own staff to read the reports. Shadow's business model was based on providing the traffic information to the stations at little or no cost in return for commercial time which the company then sold to advertisers.

In 1996, Shadow was acquired by Westwood One and in 1999 was joined by Metro Networks which was purchased by Westwood One in that year. The combined Shadow/Metro operations have offices in over 70 cities around the United States and serve over 100 markets.