Many years ago, some programmers considered me a rebel because I was an early adopter of music scheduling software. It took an hour to auto-schedule a music log at the time, partly because you had to constantly swap 5 1/4-inch floppy disks so the program would run. Traditionalists complained that the software would ruin everything and replace music directors, then program directors. Some even said, “I’ll never use a computer to schedule my music.” How crazy does that sound today? History is repeating, and the complaints are about artificial intelligence this time. There are many ways radio should use AI.
Just as music software enabled savvy users to generate better logs faster, AI is changing how you work. But just as software doesn’t fix a lousy music strategy, AI doesn’t make you smarter. The key is learning how to use it effectively.
As you’ve probably read elsewhere:
AI won’t replace you, but someone who knows how to use AI will.
The key is to leverage the power of AI in your workflow to improve your performance. In the coming weeks, I’ll share free ideas to help you enhance programming, promotion, and personalities, but there’s one solution every station needs to look at immediately.
How Radio Should Use AI To Solve Problems
You are expected to do more with fewer resources. There’s more pressure and higher expectations. Budgets have been slashed. There is no support team. Yet, everyone is expected to produce more content than ever. Longer shows. Voice-tracking multiple stations. Then, there’s the pressure to write social media posts and blogs and create videos for social media.
The result is a series of problems that need to be addressed:
Time To Prep: Show prep has suffered because nobody has time to do it right. For most shows, 90% of their prep time is spent hunting and gathering content. 10% is spent turning it into entertainment. That needs to be reversed.
It’s Not Unique: Multiple shows in the same market have the same stories, surveys, lists, and weird news items. I’ve heard nearly identical breaks on four radio stations in the same market because everyone works from the same sources.
It’s Stale: Most shows are outdated because their content is produced the day before. The world moves faster than ever. Why shouldn’t your content choices?
It’s Limited: Content is produced once a day. What about the afternoon and night shows? When they arrive, the morning show has already used the “good stuff.”
Information Segments: News, sports, and entertainment reports are thrown together at the last minute, rarely previewed, and often are from a source written to be read, not spoken.
Point Of View: Our coaches work with shows to stand out. We don’t want listeners talking about the story they heard “on the radio” or “what happened.” The goal is to inspire listeners to talk about what you said. Personalities need unique content, but finding a perspective takes time and inspiration.
Topics: When you talk about anything on the radio, listeners who care about the topic already know. We have to go beyond informing the audience and truly entertain them. Most stations don’t brainstorm enough to get past low-hanging fruit content.
Teasing: Teasing segments is as critical as the content, but learning to tease takes time, skill, and talent to drive listening.
Social Media: Most shows spend more prep time working on digital content than preparing their show. I understand the reasons, but this is insane. The problem is that management insists on quotas that must be fulfilled. Some companies make it a higher priority than what comes out of the speakers.
AI can’t solve all of your problems, but radio should use AI to fix these problems, and there is a solution.
Introducing Radio Content Pro
A new service called Radio Content Pro (RCP) is based on radio-trained AI agents. Here are some highlights of what it can do for you:
RCP’s AI bots gather, organize, and curate content 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year from verified sources and convert it into new content. It’s always new and always fresh. The content is edited into highlights and bullet points, providing what you need to know and nothing you don’t. No more reading through long, cluttered posts or prep sites to try and find the nuggets you need.
Then, the story is rewritten for the spoken word, how you talk, and with a personality. It’s the perfect solution for news stories, entertainment reports, blogs, and social media posts. Every story has three personality-based responses with a point of view, so you have something to say about the content and not just pass it on as information.
You also get several teases that are better than 90% of the teases on the radio today and four phone topics for each story to create entertaining content, whether it’s a phone topic on-air or an online discussion.
Plus, there are digital assets ready to copy and paste, including blog posts, social media content for all of the major platforms, and conversation starters. And, if you want to get more specific, click on RCP Sidekick to personalize and localize every story to your personality and style.
It’s all driven by AI, and it’s incredible. Radio Content Pro has a unique product for every format and audience target. Each is market-exclusive for local stations. Get details and request a demo with a free trial here.
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