A Former Employee from Down On The River is Back on the Air and a Viewer Speaks Out About These News Choppers

It's deja vu all over again in Memphis with a guy who used to work at WREG getting back on the airwaves. Joey Hadley signed on this morning with WPTY to do traffic updates. I chatted with the former deputy Joe Wednesday night and he was excited to be back in the traffic saddle. He's doing this gig in addition to his boxing/fitness training program in East Memphis. (A word of caution here. Turn down your speakers a bit if you go to his website.) I tuned in this morning to see how Joey did. He appeared to be a little nervous around the 7:25 cut-in but give him a few days and he'll be fitting right in. They even decided to let him wear his signature loud patterned shirts. For those not familiar with Joey's attire, when worked in radio he used the moniker "Deputy Joe with your traffic info". This flowed well since he worked for the Shelby County Sheriff's department at the time. He wore his uniform minus the sidearm when he first started doing traffic DOTR. It was his involvement in local politics that prompted calls for him to switch over to civilian attire. Somehow Joey wearing a coat and tie didn't look right as he did traffic and he was encouraged to switch to casual shirts which later evolved into outlandish and bold prints. Eventually the powers that rule DOTR told him to can the loud shirts and they got him some NewsChannel 3 shirts. By that time JH was falling out of favor with the GM and ND and they were looking for reasons to can him. He finally left and I can tell you I missed working with him on the air and we had a number of viewers who missed him as well. Good to see him back in the traffic seat.

And speaking of traffic, I got an email last week from a person who lives in East Memphis and was commenting about WREG and WMC using their newschoppers early in the morning for traffic. This woman said and I'm quoting now, "I pray it's only for the sweeps. I find myself waiting until daylight to venture outside and feed the dog. Being a Memphian for 20+ years I know that choppers in the air means the MPD is looking for a ne'er-do-well. Unfortunately I live west of I-40/240 junction out east, a very popular traffic reporting spot."
I don't know if the two stations were only flying the choppers during sweeps or if this is a full time thing. With the cost of flying running about 500 bucks an hour, I can see that burning through the budget pretty quickly. Perhaps since it's close to the end of the year the folks in charge found they had a little extra that needed to be spent and decided to do so, especially since it gets dark earlier in the evening and those chopper shots aren't as spectacular in the fall and winter as they are in the spring and summer.

I can appreciate what the emailer was thinking. The Friday after Thanksgiving, my lovely and talented bride and I were driving out to Collierville to visit her stepmother and we saw a news chopper hovering over the Nonconnah/Houston Levee interchange. My first thought was, " Oh great, something really bad has happened out here. It's either a bad wreck or some kind of road-block". Then as we got closer we figured that it was during the Noon hour and the chopper was hovering over that huge shopping center. IT WAS THE FIRST DAY OF THE HOLIDAY SHOPPING SEASON! Man, how quickly one forgets what gets reported EVERY YEAR right after Thanksgiving.

And finally, it appears Peggy Phillip will be staying in the Memphis area to pursue something in the TV/news business. That information came from the Commercial Appeal. Perhaps she will restart her blog again.