Re: Radio days
Don't get RDS Traffic Announcement (TA) - ie. the feature that interrupts whatever you are listening to give you traffic news on another station, with TMC (Traffic Management Channel) which is a datastream embedded within spare capacity the RDS and can give visual updates on a sat nav for instance.
TMC is carried by Classic Fm and some of the bigger "local" commercial stations.
BBC TA will switch you from a national BBC, or local BBC station, to another local BBC station to give you "local" traffic news. "Local" as in whatever area the station/transmitter nominally covers.
BBC TA will not switch you from a local station to a national station, such as Radio 2 traffic news, as it is highly unlikely that traffic news on a national station will be of relevance and would be a very annoying feature.
Commercial stations with TA will only interrupt tape/CD playback or increase the volume, etc. Generally (and I am happy to be corrected) no commercial station wants another commercial station to take its listeners, no matter for how short a time, so they do no implement it. Even if they are now all owned by the same corporate borg.
Previous comments on timing, etc. still seem to be relevant - ie. you can miss the first 20 seconds of the announcements, and get 20 seconds of over-run at the end (normally used by all stations to plug/advertise another programme, or sometimes, usefully, for weather info)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
