By Bob Meyer

Metro Networks, the creation of David Saperstein, delivers reports to more than 1,300 radio stations and 114 TV stations. The idea for traffic reports came to Saperstein while in a Baltimore traffic jam in 1978.

At the time he was a Ford dealer, and figured he could get free advertising for his car-lots if he assembled traffic reports and offered them to radio stations in exchange for air time.

Within a month of his brainstorm he had signed up three stations and two traffic reporters. As payment, Saperstein asked for ten seconds at the end of each broadcast.

When he built his $3 million home in Houston’s posh River Oaks neighborhood, local legend has it that he was so good at bartering radio time for goods and services that you could tell what stage of construction the house was in by the ads that ran on Metro’s traffic reports—from roofers to pool men to electrical contractors.

In 1999 Saperstein sold his company to Westwood One for $900 million in stock.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 19th, 2007 at 4:53 am and is filed under Best & Brightest Barter, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.