In the Professional Drivers Only section of the Dixie Trucker’s Home, the mood might best be described as “sullen,” rapidly accelerating toward the off-ramp marked “Seething.”
Truckers are in an angry state. Especially those who truck through the state of Illinois. “If there was a tunnel under Illinois, we’d all take it,” said trucker Bob Boocher, 48, of Osceola, Ind.
The Land of Lincoln’s insistence on a 55-miles-per-hour speed limit for trucks on interstate highways is one major burr under the truckers’ seat cushions, since all but 11 states grant 18-wheelers a 65-m.p.h. pass on federal highways.
A rawer point is the state’s new law banning radar detectors in semitrailer trucks. This seems highly discriminatory from the truckers’ cab, considering that drivers of passenger cars are still allowed to keep their trooper-duper radar detectors.
“A bunch of drivers are refusing to buy their fuel in Illinois because of that new detector law,” said trucker John Jennings, 55, of Oklahoma City.
But life on the road is not entirely grim these days for those whose $239.5 billion industry transports about 80 percent of the nation’s goods to market.
Into the dark mood at the Dixie Trucker’s Home and other truck stops across the country, a high beam of light has recently flickered on.
It is a news network designed for the long haul. Sports fanatics have ESPN. News junkies have CNN. Rock ‘n’ rollers have MTV. Now truckers have their own place to park on the broadcast band: ATTN, the American Transportation Television Network, which goes by the handle Trucker TV.
“It’s good. You can watch this and learn that we are not a bunch of thieves. We’re honest, hard-working guys,” said Jennings as he watched ATTN for the first time at the Dixie truck stop, about 15 miles south of Bloomington on Interstate Highway 55.
On Trucker TV, you will find no postmodern news modules staffed by 100-m.p.h. hairdos. Armani yields the right of way to Levi on ATTN, the nation’s first TV network to embrace the grunge look.
Newscaster Tom Ellis appears on screen as if he’s anchoring a bass boat instead of a TV show. He sports a denim jacket, T-shirt, jeans and a day’s growth of stubble. Co-anchor Kate Sullivan, who also dresses down-home, sits in a wingback chair like a new generation Aunt Bee bringing the Opies up to date on current events.
Trucker TV broadcasts from a studio in Washington, D.C., with a set designed to resemble the Marlboro man’s mountain retreat. On the walls are rods and reels, old baseball mitts, backpacks and assorted license plates and signs, including one that cautions, “No spitting.”
“We wanted a look that truckers would be comfortable with,” said executive producer Tom Hauff, noting that the set was designed as if a trucker had been turned loose with a decorating budget “but his wife didn’t have any say.”
“We agreed that most television stations don’t clearly reflect their audience, so the first thing we did, after some tremendous arguments, was decide on a more casual setting,” Hauff said.
Initially, the set designers went a bit too far with the Mack truck machismo and, as a result, “we actually took a couple things off the wall because they were too locker-roomish,” Hauff said. “They were photos of trucks, but the women standing in front of them were in poses that were more suggestive than we wanted on the air.”
The downshift in decor allows for a less hair-intensive hiring policy, Hauff noted. Trucker TV looks for gear heads rather than talking heads.
“Most stations are more concerned with how people look rather than what they know. We have great talent here, but some of them wouldn’t be able to work in most major markets because they may be a little too heavy or too bald,” he said. “One of our guys was forced to wear a toupee at his last job; here he can let it go bare.”
Serious subjects
Not that Trucker TV is Hee Haw on the Highway. The fledgling network has already aired a tough investigative report on tax cheating by unscrupulous diesel-fuel distributors who buy untaxed home heating diesel fuel and sell it as motor fuel.
In another coup, anchor Ellis flagged down Bill Clinton for a 15-minute interview late in last year’s presidential election campaign. The news desk gives regular reports on missing children, weather conditions on major thoroughfares, medical reports dealing with trucker ills, and serious features such as Sullivan’s “Long Distance Love,” which looked at truckers’ family problems.
“We did a story yesterday on a guy in Baltimore who invented a self-tarping trailer,” Hauff said. “Now that may not sound very interesting to other people, but tarping is something truckers complain about all the time. It is a dirty and dangerous process.
“We try to help truckers live better and smarter lives, but we do entertaining things too,” the producer said.
Features on country music, fishing, hunting and motor sports are standard, along with reports from Doug Roberts, the Highway Gourmet, who offers tips not on road-kill recipes but on trucker-friendly eating spots that offer more than the usual mystery meat and gruel grease.
“So far, he’s found a little old lady in Pennsylvania who makes great pies, and a place in Virginia that sells buffalo burgers,” Hauff reported.
Another popular feature is “Highway Heroes,” which is one small step toward restoring the truckers’ image as knights of the road rather than terrors of the turnpike, according to industry boosters.
“In the media, trucks are too often portrayed as big and ugly and a hazard. We are working hard at building a more positive image, and Trucker TV seems to be a positive force,” said Fred Serpe of the Illinois Trucking Associations Inc., based in River Grove.
A brother in radio
Much of the programming on Trucker TV is derived from that of the Interstate Radio Network, a Chicago-based, syndicated radio show that caters to the trucking industry and airs in 62 markets nationwide.
“Basically, what they are doing is my radio show with pictures,” said IRN syndicator Fred Sanders, who was known as “The Trucker’s Friend” at WMAQ radio in Chicago from 1975 to 1988 before he started his own radio network.
Trucker TV wisely signed Sanders to a twice-weekly stint as an anchor on its broadcasts, and the veteran radio man said he welcomes the new medium to his truck-stop territory.
“It’s one of those things whose time has come. Grocery stores have their own supermarket checkout channels. Airports have boarding-area channels. My wife just had a baby, and the hospital has its own Newborn Channel, with commercials,” he said.
“Trucker TV is a new medium with a lot of potential advertiser appeal. The drivers I have talked to like it partly because it is new and also because it is for them,” Sanders said. “The trucker’s life is a pretty lonely existence. Any time you do anything for them, they are appreciative.”
Launched in mid-October, ATTN is an advertiser-supported, direct-broadcast network that will be beamed by satellite only into truck stops willing to pay $395 a month. So far, ATTN is shown in 50 truck stops around the U.S., but 250 others are under contract and awaiting hookups. The network hopes to have 1,000 of the nation’s 2,500 full-service truck stops on line within a few years.
Trucker TV airs from 4 to 10 p.m. CST Sunday through Thursday. By next year its producers hope to be broadcasting 18 hours a day, seven days a week.
“I think it is off to an excellent start,” said Mark Beeler, vice president of the Dixie Trucker’s Home. “They provide a lot of information to the drivers that might be difficult to otherwise obtain.”
If information is the currency of the ’90s, as all the megatrendies claim, then Trucker TV appears to be one nifty bit of niche marketing. Truckers are said to spend $25 billion a year at truck stops, so when they watch ATTN at Dixie Trucker’s Home, it catches them with their wallets out.
“Unlike traditional television, Trucker TV is able to focus your advertising efforts on the men and women who are already most likely to purchase your products and services,” goes ATTN’s marketing pitch.
Sponsored by No Doz
The driving forces behind Trucker TV, Steve Cohen and Jim Rutledge Jr., are veterans of CNN and Court TV who targeted truckers as a captive, but untamed, audience. “There are 3.5 million truckers out there who have no way to connect with television for 10 hours a day,” Cohen said.
The TV executives said certain advertisers are more than happy to pay a premium to advertise over the lunch counter to such a well-defined, highly homogeneous audience: 65 percent gun owners, 85 percent white, 95 percent male and 110 percent country.
“We are to television what direct mail is to print media. We are targeted to a very specific audience, and we think we know our audience quite well,” said executive producer Hauff, a 20-year TV veteran who spent three years as a trucker in his bohemian days.
Trucker TV’s road warrior audience has already attracted a rugged lineup of advertisers-No Doz, Alka Seltzer, Igloo Coolers, Cummins Engines, Outdoor Life and the National Rifle Association among them.
AT&T also signed on as a major advertiser because the average truck driver spends $152 a month on long-distance phone calls. “Truckers are starved for information out there,” said Roger King, spokesman for the National Association of Truck Stop Operators, in Alexandria, Va. “They dive for the telephones when they make a stop. They have to talk to somebody.”
At the least, Trucker TV stands to upgrade the level of over-the-counter conversation at truck stops across the country, said beer-truck driver Kent Osland, 39, of Auburn, Ill., as he watched ATTN over dinner at the Dixie Trucker’s Home.
“This ought to get us away from hearing and telling the same old driving stories that have been around forever,” he said. “They all start out, `You ain’t gonna believe this . . .’ and end with `. . . and that ain’t no (bull)!’ “
