ASIA

Peter Saxon asks Raoul Wedel: How will this end?The concept of synthetic voices generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been around since 1965 when Robby the Robot got lost in space along with the family Robinson. 20 years later Max Headroom starred in his own TV show and in ads for New Coke.

Robby the Robot from Lost in Space
Both fictional android characters, Robby and Max, were played by real actors giving their interpretation of what an artificially generated voice might sound like, sometime in the future.

Well, that future has arrived. Synthetic Voices like Alexa and Siri are used extensively in smart speakers as well as in car Satnavs and much more.Now, the people at the Adthos Creative Studio have taken the whole concept to a much higher plane offering broadcast quality audio ads using AI generated voice technology.As you are probably aware by now, Adthos is a major advertiser with radioinfo, which means you probably also know that they’ve created a readymade campaign for radio stations focused on encouraging vaccine uptake, which can be downloaded and used for free, covering 6,500 cities in 40 countries, and in 70 languages and dialects.As exciting as all that sounds, one can’t help but feel that the better, the more realistic synthetic voiceovers become, there could be some less positive outcomes arise from it.Will AI make voice artists redundant? Is this how Big Brother will finally take over?To answer those and other questions about the ethics of AI is the man behind all the high tech, Raoul Wedel, founder of Wedelsoft Software, the organisation behind the Adthos brand.I asked him straight out: Now that thousands of stations and production houses worldwide have had a chance to sample the product, have you had any negative feedback regarding the ethics involved?“There has, and to be honest, it greatly varies by the country, the ad itself, and also by the voiceover artist, of course, because they’re still human beings who have different opinions and different views.“One voiceover that we recorded is actually a major iHeart talent in the US. And he did many shows on KISS-FM Boston while located in Los Angeles, and he thought it was the coolest thing ever. He said, ‘You know, this is going to happen anyway. There’s no way that I’m going to change that. So, I might as well just take it and run with it.”There’s a myriad application for AI that can “sample” a voice and generate audio from a script.As Mr Wedel explains, “Our system comes with a set of default voices. If you’re a brand, let’s say McDonald’s and you have 400 locations in your country and you want to send every local station a different version of an ad with the local address of the local franchise, then we can take their regular corporate voice that does all their ads on TV and radio. We can put that voice into the system and create 600 versions. And the franchisees could potentially change that too. Ton the highest end on the spectrum of what we’re doing.”Does the voice get paid more for the coverage, even though they don’t have to physically read each individual version?“Sure, they do. It’s different, though, from market to market. There are great differences because the smaller the market is, the more afraid the talent is of competing with an AI version of themselves in their own market, because then potentially they’re going to hear their voice on every station and then nobody’s going to book them in real life anymore, especially if the talent pool is small.“We have two fee models for voice artists. We have a buyout model, where we give them a one-time fee and we can use their voice for it in smaller markets. We also have an option where the talent’s paid royalties.”I saw a meme once on a car salespersons desk that said: ‘The key to salesmanship is sincerity. Once you learn to fake that, you’ve got, it made.’It was a joke, of course. But will there be a time that AI will include the full gamut of nuanced emotions so that you won’t be able to tell the difference a synthesised voice and a real or ‘analogue’ one?“You can compare this with the first music synthesisers. It’s kind of the same thing. And when those first synthesisers came along and you heard a string orchestra, it didn’t sound very much like a string orchestra. But these days, most professional musicians wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a synthesised violin and a real violin because the quality has improved so, so fast.“This is growing extremely fast. The technology provider we’re working with has updates coming all the time on a day-by-day basis.”There’s much more to synthetic voices than radio and audio advertising. They’re developing text to speech engines to record audio books, for example.Mr Wedel says, “I personally think that in five years time, there’s not going to be a Starbucks or a McDonald’s that has a real person taking an order on the speaker of the Drive-Thru. The technology is there and it’s going to be very quick.”

Peter Saxon […]

Content from BPR
A recent article on Bloomberg.com (July 7, 2021) highlighted the demise of the Subway brand in the US.

Subway is one of the most recognisable names in the US fast food/restaurant industry; their foot long subs are legendary. Subway has more than 22,000 US locations making it the largest by store count in that country, dwarfing even McDonald’s. But its huge size obscures a simple fact: American tastes have changed.

Subway restaurants, as the article noted, has sported the “Eat Fresh” slogan for years, even as it peddled limp tomatoes and processed deli meats.

According to Bloomberg, this year the company announced what it calls the biggest changes ever in its more than half-a-century history. Dubbed the “Eat Fresh Refresh”, Subway is rolling out two new bread recipes, several on-trend premium ingredients and a handful of new sandwiches, plus nationwide delivery service. It is hoping those changes will lure diners back to its stores after five straight years of declines. Sceptics of the brand say it will not be so simple.

“Subway has sat on its laurels for so long; it’s kind of difficult to pull out of this hole,” said John Gordon, principal at Pacific Management Consulting Group. “The sales have fallen so much in the store.”

To make matters worse, the business model was not geared to deal with the COVID pandemic. While 2020 and the pandemic was a boom year for many US fast-food rivals, fewer than one in 10 Subway stores has a drive-thru, meaning it missed out on much of the customers demand for low-contact purchases. In fact, the Subway app did not even offer delivery. According to Bloomberg, the company closed 1600 locations in the US last year as sales tumbled 18 per cent.

The Subway brand also took a series of high-profile hits prior to the pandemic: Ireland’s Supreme Court ruled last year that its bread had too much sugar to be called bread, its tuna’s origin has been called into question and it is hard to forget Jared Fogle, the company’s long time spokesperson (he’s the guy that lost 111kg by including Subway in his diet) – Jared was convicted in 2015 of child sex offences.

“They have a positioning and identity crisis,” said Joseph Szala, founder and managing director of Vigor, a restaurant marketing firm. “Fresh,” he said, is a “banal, forgettable word” and the weight-loss pitch just is not sticking.

Was your radio station’s business model geared to adapt to the pandemic swiftly? Is it geared for the next crisis or major market upheaval… whatever that might be? Valuable lessons have been learnt from the pandemic; sometimes these lessons have made businesses stronger. Those unable to adapt are struggling in this new world. Being able to adapt to market changes quickly is the key to success for any business. Employ game theory to future proof your business model. See my recent article “The Importance of Game Theory in Strategic Planning”.

Does your station have an identity crisis? Is your positioning statement the “Eat Fresh” of radio programming…in other words, out of date, banal, forgettable? Are you promising something and delivering something entirely different……see the reference to limp tomatoes above! Find out what the listeners think. Is it yesterday’s message?

Have you been resting on your laurels? #1 survey after survey …without objectively examining your product and that of your competitors on a regular basis; looking for strengths and weaknesses in your station and your competitors.

Is your station “in touch” with listeners needs or “out of touch”? Don’t presume you know…. ask them!
By David Kidd, BPR […]

According to an article by Alan Hughes, broadcasters can make a major contribution to reducing climate change.The transmission of radio signals requires the use of electricity. A lot of this electricity results in a lot of harmful CO2 emitted from power stations.Medium Frequency (MW) Amplitude Modulated (AM) broadcasting started in the 1920s and transmits a constant carrier as shown below which is characterised by significant loss of energy.

Modern semiconductor MF AM transmitters consume 1.22 times more electricity than the rated output power. This does not include the cooling of higher power transmitters and other opex costs.High Frequency (Short Wave) AM broadcasting emerged after MF AM. It consumes 1.389 times the electricity of the rated output. This band can cover from regions to whole continents and can be used for domestic or international coverage. Fading, distortion and noise can also be a problem.Very High Frequency Modulated (FM) in stereo started in 1961 and can cover a city or, if radiated from a high tower at high power, even a region.Each of the above analogue broadcasting systems can only carry one program per transmitter.Ultra and Super High Frequencies are used by mobile internet. The Telco’s business model is based on monetising each service. High speed 5G uses the 27 GHz band and higher, which requires repeaters 900m apart, which gives a coverage area of 2.5 km². Slower 5G and older generations use around 1GHz which can cover around 300 km². So, this requires huge numbers of air-conditioned base stations to cover regions without black spots while using lots of electricity. Some of the electricity is anyway lost on the long power lines.The newest option is to use Digital Radio Mondiale for all frequency bands above and below 30 MHz: LW, SW, MW and VHF bands I, II-FM and III.If a DRM transmitter in the VHF band is carrying three programmes, then the electricity consumption must be divided by three making it 19 % of an FM transmitter carrying the same program. The same transmitter feed with a 6-channel modulator for 6 consecutive transmission frequencies, the electricity consumption per program will decrease even more.The environment Government department or electricity supplier in each country or region can give you the coefficient required to convert the electrical energy used in a year to the number of tonnes of CO2 produced in a year. This coefficient will be near zero for hydro power, rising significantly for brown coal fired power stations.DRM broadcasting overcomes the AM reception problems, giving clear stereo sound and data. It can provide continuous decoded signals to the equivalent of unlistenable AM listening.It should be remembered that most transmitters are operated nearly continuously, whereas receivers are only operated when the listener wants to. However, DRM receivers have a standby mode to decode just enough data to detect an Emergency Warning Message, which will wake the receiver, select the warning message, emit a warning signal to wake the listener and then announce the warning loudly. Also, it will switch on the screen so that a map of the disaster and any detailed instructions can be viewed.DRM also has TPEG navigation capability for instructing vehicle navigation systems to avoid roads closed by the police as the result of a disaster, saving lives or blockages reducing vehicle energy consumption. ES 201 980 – V4.2.1 – Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM); System Specification (etsi.org)Since the telcos switch off their oldest technology every 8 years, after 60 years of FM stereo and 100 years for AM, isn’t it time broadcast radio went DRM with the most energy efficient distribution system to compete with the digital being used by the telcos, which produces more carbon dioxide as does AM and FM.To check the energy savings and compare analogue and digital you might find the recently published DRM energy efficiency calculator very useful: https://www.drm.org/energy-efficiency-calculator/  […]

Music streaming company Spotify has announced that it is making a new Lyrics feature available to all free and global users across all platforms.The feature was previously only offered to a limited selection of countries. Users in other markets only had access to “Behind the Lyrics,” a feature which offered lyrics interspersed with trivia about the song, its meaning, the artist and other commentary.Lyrics is provided by Musixmatch, which claims to have a library of “over 8 million” titles.

Lyrics will be available on all operating systems and devices that support the Spotify app, including iOS, Android, desktop computers, gaming consoles and smart TVs. Additionally, users have the ability to share lyrics on social media.“Lyrics are one of the most requested features from listeners across the globe. So after iterating and testing, we’ve created an experience that’s simple and interactive—and even shareable,” the company wrote in a blog post. “By partnering with Musixmatch, we’re bringing song lyrics to life through in-app access across the majority of our extensive library of tracks.”To access the feature:On the Spotify mobile app
Tap on the “Now Playing View” on a song.
While listening, swipe up from the bottom of the screen.
You’ll see track lyrics that scroll in real time as the song is playing!
To share, simply tap the “Share” button at the bottom of the lyrics screen and then select the lyrics you want to share—and where you want to share it—via third-party platforms.
On the Spotify desktop app
From the “Now Playing” bar, click on the microphone icon while a song is playing.
Voila! You’ll see track lyrics that scroll in real time while the song plays.
On the SpotifyTV app
Open the “Now Playing View” on a song.
Navigate to the right corner to the “lyrics button” and select if you want to enable Lyrics.
Once enabled, you’ll see the lyrics in the “Now Playing” View. […]

Content from BPROne of Radio’s unique benefits is localism…. local branding and local focus. Radio stations named after local landmarks, cities and regions are often lost in the rush to adopt corporate branding. The most important part of this is whether the gain for the corporation is greater than the loss of the local relationship.Like many industries, the evolution and growth of media and radio follows a fairly predictable pattern.

Starting from small beginnings, a single station in a single market builds relationships, brand value and an audience. At some point along this journey, the company focusses on a path to growth building a stronger brand joined together by listener and advertiser loyalty.Because the entry point for Radio and television ownership is limited by regulation – licenses approved or bought subject to regulatory approvals. Over time, strict ownership regulations have been relaxed and industries move from a highly regulated stage to an unregulated one.Deregulation often sees the emergence of companies whose primary goal is to build scale through acquisition.Building business via acquisition has enormous appeal – one of which is to enjoy economies of scale (sharing resources in making products and selling them) – we see this working in industries like hotels, travel, airlines banking, brewing and media… the consolidated business enjoys the simplicity of a single brand that can be accessed almost everywhere. Think Sheraton Hotels, etc.In some case’s corporate brewing owners have retained local brand affiliations, VB (Victoria Bitter) Castlemaine XXXX (Queensland) and Swan (a West Australian beer brewed in South Australia!). Despite these brands being retained, locally focused craft beer increasingly attracts local loyalties.Radio has its own examples where the corporate need has undermined listener connection – in this process, personal connection is replaced by corporate ‘product-isation’…  as an example, in 2015 iconic contemporary music station B105, (where the B stands for Brisbane) became Hit 105 broadly coinciding with loss of market leadership …. In 2020 B105 was brought back. More recently Sea FM on the Gold Coast has re-appeared.In the UK ‘local’ radio station names were superseded by National brands – locally named stations becoming Capital or Heart, Hits or Greatest Hits. Good for national revenue but bad for local listener connections. According to a recent Ofcom report, consumption of broadcast radio continues to decline in the UK, are these connected?There are many examples just like these where the relationship is lost sometimes forever and often for dubious corporate gain. So, before you take a decision to drop, change or modify successful branding that could change the relationship between you, your brand (and your career) stop for a moment and consider whether there is a benefit to your listeners that will be clear and beneficial.By Peter Don, BPR […]

Content from BPRInterviews have long played a part in radio programs. Interviews are commonplace on news/talk formats and many breakfast programs consider interviews with experts and celebrities to be important. However, we often over-estimate the value of interviews and the amount of interest that they generate with the listening audience. Interviews are popular because they give presenters something to talk about and someone with whom they can talk. However, all interviews are not equal. Many of them are tune-outs.Recently, Perry Michael Simon, Vice President News, Talk and Sports at AllAccess.com wrote a column about interviews that was so compelling, we just had to share it with you.

Here are some excerpts from that column:I hear so many interviews that leave me asking why they bothered. It’s not just that many of the guests aren’t that interesting, or it’s a topic that I don’t care about, or that some guests are there primarily to sell something. It’s also the way hosts handle interviews, and that goes for talk radio and for podcasts. Here, then, is a little free advice…
Before you book an interview, ask yourself who would be interested in this guest. Time-filling isn’t a good reason to do an interview. “But it’s a celebrity” is not a good reason, unless we’re talking A+++-list, someone you’re sure your audience would tune in to hear even if they were reading the proverbial phone book.
Prepare. Do not go into an interview without a strong idea of where you want to go with it. Do your research — don’t delegate this to your producer, do it yourself — and try to develop questions that will elicit unique, even newsworthy responses.
Establish, right out of the box, why your audience should be interested in the interview. Unless the guest is a major name/household word to your audience, you need to let them (the listeners) know who your guest is and why the listeners should care.
Ask smart questions that display the fact that you did your research. The other day, I heard a host turn to a guest and say “your thoughts.” That’s not a question. That’s also allowing the guest, if they indeed have thoughts, to determine the direction of the interview, which can lead to all kinds of trouble. If you find yourself asking a guest for “your thoughts,” don’t. Just no. Have an actual question that you’re reasonably certain will lead someplace. And if you’re interviewing a politician, please, I beg you, do not fawn over them. Ask tough questions, even of someone with whom you generally agree. You’re not a public relations spokesperson. You represent the audience, and, ideally, you’re asking the questions they’d like to ask if they had the access you have. Don’t fan. Be a pro.
If an interview is not what you’d hoped it would be, do not prolong the listeners’ agony, or yours. If you’re on the radio, end the interview whenever you feel like it’s gone on long enough. Don’t worry about hurting anyone’s feelings; just politely thank the guest and move on. (Always prepare more than enough material to fill the time in case an interview falls flat.) It’s your show, your audience, your decision. If something doesn’t work, don’t try to force the issue. Dump it and move on.
Don’t you wish that every interviewer would follow these simple rules? If these rules are followed, your audience will be very grateful.By Andy Beaubien, BPR […]