“AI is going to eliminate a ton of jobs from our industry, isn’t it?”
Time and again in meetings at this year’s NAB, I was met with this deflated question from key people in the radio industry.
And who could blame them for asking? As of the end of 2023, less than 30% of U.S. radio stations had more than one live and local daypart.
The answer to this “jobs” question is this:
AI will transform the work processes in EVERY industry. It’s inevitable.
That does not automatically mean we need fewer people.
Whether adoption of AI and transformation of “process” becomes reason enough to adjust an industry’s workforce size hinges on the decisions of the industry leaders. Personally, I believe the radio industry thrives on human talent.
AI should be leveraged to enhance radio’s capabilities in serving local communities. AI can make local radio more powerful, efficient, and innovative.
Let people do people things. Let AI do process things. Focus our human resources on tasks that uniquely require human insight and creativity.
The best operators will help their people adopt AI and get to work on new and better ways to contribute to our industry’s growth.
By adopting AI, it’s possible for us to reallocate our best people to focus on their best work. AI is the co-producer of your dreams. Always available, just had a fresh cup of coffee, and will go-go for hours. This isn’t just about automation, it’s about the augmentation of human efforts, elevating everyone’s game.
In the past, content creators and talent in our industry have dedicated about 90% of their time to processes such as prep, editing, post-production, re-posting content, while only 10% has been spent on creative pursuits. Now with adoption of AI, creators can shift to 90% creativity, 10% process. And there has never been a better time to embrace AI.
If we’re using AI to help us deliver better content (and faster), this could repair the hole in the bucket of audience engagement as well as other ills that plague the radio industry. Could AI be the cure to fix leaking audience and revenue numbers, as well as create new opportunities, attract new audiences, and help media executives stay relevant to a new and different class of advertisers? To all of this, I’d say a resounding yes. AI could be exactly the cure-all our industry has been dying to find.
Two weeks ago at NAB Show 2024, I had the privilege of sharing the stage with Ameca, the AI-powered humanoid robot, for a once-in-a-lifetime keynote. Together, we revealed how humans and AI are not just co-existing but thriving together, and how this partnership is fundamentally shifting the media landscape. During the Q&A portion of our session, Curtis LeGeyt, the President and CEO of NAB, asked us: “What are some of the most practical ways that the broadcasters in this room can utilize AI right now?”
My co-presenter robot didn’t miss a beat… “O.M.G. Curtis, Curtis, Curtis, where do I start?,” said Ameca. “I can help broadcasters to know your audience better, to know your buyers and their customers better, to produce content for every platform.
“I can help ideate and drive promotions. I can help localize national or regionally syndicated shows. AND I can create social video, AND I can write the first draft of content for you, AND I can extend the power of your team in meeting the audience’s demand for content without unrealistic needs for new headcount. AND I haven’t even gotten to radio… Futuri is already working with many stations using AI to voice local weather, voice trending content, and voice entertainment to non-prime dayparts. Basically, I can help make humans’ jobs so easy, I will free up your creativity to go make more movies about the horrible, dystopian future that I am certain to cause.”
The audience laughed. But I thought, Yes, Ameca. The atmosphere at our keynote was like a rock concert (shout out to David Lee Roth, who was in the audience). On stage, Ameca and I delved into the findings from the most comprehensive AI in Media study ever conducted. The study, spearheaded by research veteran Bill Thiel of CMG Research, surveyed nearly 5,200 media consumers — encompassing news, TV, audio, and radio — and unveiled the depth of AI’s integration into audience expectations and media consumption habits. It’s worth noting that we carefully selected respondents who had no direct ties to the broadcast industry to maintain the integrity of the data. If you’re interested in reading more about the study, you can find it at https://aiforbroadcasting.com/.
In future Inside Radio columns, I’ll share more about our research findings. But for now, think about the new choices AI creates for us. It’s a time in history for us to be as creative as we want to be. So yes, to agree with Ameca, AI will free up our human time to make dystopian films about the robot uprising. But that’s because our actual reality will give us more flexibility and opportunity than ever. If we embrace it.
This article originally ran as a column on Inside Radio.
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