AI and radio

An audio version of my newsletter, at https://james.crid.land/update/ai-and-radio

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hello, I'm James Cridland, the radio futurologist, and every week or so I write something about

(00:05):
the future of radio and all of that. It's my newsletter which you can get at James.Crid.Land,
and this is June 23rd, AI and Radio. But before I dive into AI, I have a pretty picture in
the newsletter version of this, which is for a radio station. It's a radio station's advert

(00:26):
on the side of a road in Toronto in Canada. Today Radio is what it's advertising. It says
New 93.5. Today Radio, great music, great conversations. It's owned by Stingray. It's an
adult hits format station. Now I have a dream of doing a session at a radio conference where

(00:49):
advertising professionals look at ads from radio stations and work out if anyone would take any
notice of them. I would say that with this one, at least it's not just promoting the music mix,
but I do wonder if it would work better if it was able to change in terms of the topics they're
discussing on the station. Looking at the poster, it's a piece of paper rather than a fancy sign,

(01:17):
so yeah, who knows. But anyway, the website appears to be a collection of their social posts,
the stations based on Now Radio, which has worked excellently in other markets in Canada.
It's always good to see radio companies trying something new, so that's always a good thing.
Now a few weeks ago, I was at Radio Days North America in Toronto in Canada. The first keynote

(01:38):
of the event was Daniel and Stan Digg from Futuri talking about radio GBT, and he quoted a bit from
my review earlier in the year, which was fun. Here is the review. I said, I took a listen while on a
train in Sydney looking forward to being rather rude about this horrible idea, but irritating me
though, it's rather good. Yes, well anyway, he ended up quoting that. The excellent Fred Jacobs,

(02:04):
who is also there, has also written up about AI Ashley. AI Ashley is an AI-generated radio DJ
using radio GPT in Portland. And it's certainly the talk of the industry. One delegate at Radio
Days North America was incensed that a senior Rogers exec could stand up and claim that people

(02:25):
were the important thing for the future of radio, but also stand up and say that he was looking at
using radio GPT as well. This is apparently a bad thing. And I'm not so sure it is. Because any
technology can be used for good and for bad. Just ask anyone who's used Twitter. When I started in
radio, all the talk was about how music was beginning to be scheduled by computer and how this was

(02:52):
a bad thing. Then we moved from DJs playing audios from carts and vinyl and CDs to just hitting the
next button on a play out system. And this, I think, is just the next step in the evolution of how
radio is produced. Radio GPT could be used to replace DJs on music-intensive radio stations,

(03:13):
but you probably don't want to do that because that's unlikely to be a good long-term plan.
What's likely to be a better long-term plan is to consider using AI to add to the output of your
station. If it were me in charge, thankfully it isn't, I would be replacing ours which have
non-stop music and injecting some form of AI output in those hours. Radio's USP is that it offers more

(03:39):
than Spotify on shuffle. But if you're just running an hour-long music sweep, you're offering nothing
that Spotify can't do better. Which is where AI comes in, you'd think. But let's also consider
the other bits of radio's output. You've got tightly formatted output like travel news or
weather. That seems ideal to be handed by AI to me or handled by AI to me. Maybe you're a bloke

(04:05):
doing an afternoon show. Could you get a female AI voice to do the travel every half hour? Would
that make the sound of the station a little less blokey? I'm occasionally using AI to save me time.
Relatively often, I'm typing into Google's BARD, the prompt, please summarise the following text
in a paragraph containing three sentences and then copy and pasting a big word you press release

(04:28):
into. Is that the sort of thing that could help a busy team somewhere? Could it be used to better
schedule music? Can it understand categorisations and help data entry? You know, I had the same
knee-jerk reaction against AI taking all our jobs, but the more I think about it, the more these
tools can be used to help. And the idea of using artificial stuff to fill non-peak hours isn't,

(04:54):
of course, new. I believe that county sound groups Eagle FM had Talon, a robotic presenter,
doing overnights for some years in the 1990s. And perhaps it's here that AI can help a little.
Elsewhere, going on, another great read from the EBU's Tech Eye magazine, or maybe it's

(05:15):
Techie magazine, that would be clever, wouldn't it? Anyway, I'm quoted tangentially on page 11
if you wanted to download that. There's a link in the show notes. Nielsen's audio today report is
out looking at US audio consumption. It isn't yet on a website, so I can't link to it. But my favourite
quote from that is that 74% of all AM radio listening is done in the car. No wonder they were

(05:39):
upset. 74% of all AM radio listening is done in the car. Radio Centre has a new look and a new logo.
They've killed Pac-Man in case you cared. Duncan Newmarch is stuck in the 80s. Linking to this,
it's great for fans of 1980s radio. There's some very nice production in there, although it is

(05:59):
quite dated, but I think that's the point. So worth a listen. Good to see updates to a tool for FMRDS
and DAB DLS and even HD radio from Media Realm. They're one of the supporters of this podcast,
so I suppose I'd better keep a closer eye on what they're doing. Some positive data as well about

(06:19):
radio and audio in Canada as well to take a look at. Again, linked from the show notes. And Spotify
cancelled Meghan Markle, you might have heard. The ABC in Australia has all the best industry
commentators talking about that. And I link to that too. Thank you to Clyde Broadcast, Richard
Hillson, James Masterton, Brun, Audio Consulting, Soma FM and Media Realms Radio websites. If you'd

(06:45):
like to support my work in any way, you can buy me a coffee. You can become a member to give regularly,
or you can just give a one-off coffee or five. Buymeacoffee.com. James Cridland is where to do
that. You can follow me on Masterdon too. I'm James at Crid.Land there. You can just search for that
and you'll find me. And on Nostra, you can also just find me there as well, James at Crid.Land.

(07:10):
And that will be a lovely thing. My professional website has more details about who I am and what
I do and whether I can help you further as well. You'll find that at James.Cridland.net. But until
next time, thank you for listening and keep listening.