Automated Radio Stations/Satellite Radio Stations

[guyinmgm]

I've worked in radio before with a non-automated station.

Beside the cost savings in using automation for radio announcers and the other staff behind the scenes, do any of you feel there really any benefit to automation except in cost savings? Does anyone have any thoughts on whether automated radio is the new radio of the future, say for the next 5 years? If not automated radio controlled locally by computers and music locally at the location, do we think that live local radio is going away in favor of syndicated formats available by satellite feeds 24/7?

I've heard my share of local automated radio with many a song in a row with no talk and no advertising. Do most listeners of radio now listen in for the music or the personality of a local person offering warmth and information?

I really don't know the answers to these questions but curious what others may think. I would much rather have local radio without automation but I realize I'm not an owner, just a person who has always loved working in radio and see the value it has in our lives.

Anyone have any thoughts?

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

I think it was 49 years ago that I saw my first automation machine. Very simple little dude.

Your question has been asked and debated many times through the years. There must be at least 10,000 different views of
if automation should be used
how automation should be used.

Every industry, every trade, every profession is being impacted by modern new technology.

Don't sit around crying that we must stop this terrible thing.... we must stonewall the movement.

Do be creative and figure out ways to make great product (programming in this case) with the tools that are readily available.

Radio sounds bad in many cases because the owners, the users, the operators of program automation are lacking in creativity, user skills, and vision.

When it first came on the scene I saw it as a way to free up air talent from mindless menial time-robbing labor so they could do things to make programming better: use the time savings to call about a news story, to interview someone, go sell something.

Read Friedman's book entitled "The World Is Flat" and then come back to this topic.

 

[FredRichards]

I've always taken the approach of letting the talent be creative, and letting the automation assemble the product. If done correctly, it can sound extremely good.

 

[ruger22com]

In todays business, where competition between station has more or less become a moot subject due to corporate station clusters, automation will become more and more the norm. In ten years I doubt you will see live jocks anywhere. Mornings and afternoons will be syndicated, the other daysparts either also syndicated, or voice tracked. With today's digital studio, and lack of need for real ratings (with cluster ownership) why would a company not have just one staff announcer who could voice track the stations 24 hours of programming in an hour (or even ALL the cluster's stations)?
Cumulas, Clear channel and the rest love cutting talent positions.

 

[SirRoxalot]

Biting the Bullet

With today's digital studio, and lack of need for real ratings (with cluster ownership) why would a company not have just one staff announcer who could voice track the stations 24 hours of programming in an hour (or even ALL the cluster's stations)?

Ruger, don't take this personally, but who'd listen to such dreck? Certainly not today's 18-30s, who will be the 25-54s 10 years from now. CBS inadvertantly proved that such a path would lead to folly. The "Jackification" of CBS led to a sharp rating decline. Dan Mason spearheaded a return to personality radio that sent ripples throughout an industry looking for answers to declining listening and declining revenues.

An engineer installing an automation system at one of the stations that I worked once told me "This system will make good jocks better, and bad jocks unemployed." Some people at corporate are beginning to figure out that good radio brings in more money than bad radio - and automation is bad radio.

 

[Bongwater]

Personally, radio automation to me has it's place, but it's not a resting place. "For temporary use only" is the catch phrase of the day.

Voicetracking does not solve anything. When it came out, people were thinking "WOW! Now we don't have to hire weekend people!" That sounded delicious and it was.....until everybody started doing it. Then it provoked violent attacks of yawning. Slowly, radio became aural wallpaper.

Now you have freak thunderstorms while your voicetracked announcer is gloating about all this wonderful weather we're having today. You have ammonia/gas leaks and earthquakes happening while your voicetracked announcer is jawing about Britney Spears's latest meltdown.

Not saying it always ends this way with voicetracking, but there's been quite a few instances when it has. And the mere possiblility that it CAN happen to you is scary enough. The arguement that "This system will make good jocks better, and bad jocks unemployed" can also translate into "This system can also make bad jocks heroes, and bad station owners bankrupt", given the right alignment of the planets.

The other problem is the very fact that aside from voicers and spots, with automated radio, you're just listening to somebody else's crummy iPod. Anyone who has visions of a day when there will be no live jocks had better be careful of what they anticipate; If a computer can replace a live jock, it can also replace a live programmer. And we're almost at that frightening stage as we speak in the current state of affairs we have in the radio industry.

This radio biz is imploding - there's no denying that. And if it was all great radio we've been having the last twenty years, then why would we even need XM/Sirius, Music Choice/DMX, web radio, iPods, microbroadcasters, LPFMs or other forms of traditional radio alternatives? Automation I feel is part of that problem (to say nothing of lousy re-re-re-re-re-re-recycled liners and formats.) Local radio is supposed to be live. That's what seperates it from all the competing formats and that's already visible on the most successful local radio stations. So maybe there's a place to start if we're going to turn this pig around.

Another thing: Forget what you were taught in the '90s about successful programming - it doesn't work in 2008. At all.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Part of the discussion of program automation is like the two salesmen getting into an argument over whether the glass is half empty or half full.

If you have hired a person 500 miles away to do the voice tracking and it is a side job for the, they are probably not avaailable on those few days when the weather turns surprising or the gas main breaks to do a quickie do-over.

Those kind of days don't happen often. If your voice tracking is done by a local person, a person who has other duties at the station (maybe even ownership) then..... a properly thought out automation system would make it possible for someone to dash into the station, or even from a studio in their home, create timely replacement voice tracks to fit the changed weather or the local emergency.

I know of one North Georgia FM station that will switch to live assist in a heart-beat with one of the owners doing traffic or weather or catastrophe coverage just like he would have when he was a pup 40 years ago. I don't get the idea they are going broke!

Second thought: bad programming did not create the need and demand for new sources of distribution such as sattelite radio, etc. This was just technology looking for an opportunity to exist. Technicians/engineers/sceintists created a new tool and said: "Viola, we have a new tool. What can we do to make it useful so we can sell tools and make money. Someone said: Let's pretend we are radio and see if anybody likes it. I would agree that POOR programming let them become part of the mix too easily. It was not FAILED programming that drove people to go and create a new technology just for the sake of filling the vacuum left by failed programming.

That is like saying trucks were only invented because railroads had failed. Henry Ford did not sit down one afternoon and invent the car and then a beefed up version called the truck because the railroad industry had collapsed and left a vacuum!

 

[Chuck]

Henry Ford did not sit down one afternoon and invent the car and then a beefed up version called the truck because the railroad industry had collapsed and left a vacuum!

I understand your pain, but Henry Ford did not nvent and "invent the car." He just figured out how to do it cheaply. (Sound familiar?) Be thankful that Henry doesn't run broadcasting. It would be even worse.

 

[DouglasB]

Automation (live assist, satellite, etc) is like any tool. If used properly it can enhance your presentation and your bottom line. Used incorrectly, or ineffectively, it can be a disaster.

 

[Chuck]

Automation (live assist, satellite, etc) is like any tool. If used properly it can enhance your presentation and your bottom line. Used incorrectly, or ineffectively, it can be a disaster.

That's it in a nutshell. Automation is nothing new. A lot of FM stations have been automated since the 1960's. Some of them were (or are) really good stations that served their listeners well. It's all what you do with it.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Henry Ford did not sit down one afternoon and invent the car and then a beefed up version called the truck because the railroad industry had collapsed and left a vacuum!

I understand your pain, but Henry Ford did not nvent and "invent the car." He just figured out how to do it cheaply. (Sound familiar?) Be thankful that Henry doesn't run broadcasting. It would be even worse.

Chuck: Don't lose track of the logic over a convenient but flawed minor detail. Maybe I could have said Ford invented the mass production of vehicles. Maybe the guy in Kokomo, Indiana whose name evades me for the moment invented the car. Maybe some Frenchman invented the car.

The main logic I was presenting was: someone had a new invention. They made a machine that could do something. Now that they had it, they went looking for a problem to solve with their new solution.

WHOEVER DID IT DID NOT SIT DOWN AND SAY: SINCE THE TRAIN, THE RAILROAD HAS FAILED, LET'S LOOK FOR SOMETHING TO INVENT.

Bell Labs has been digitizing sound for decades. I remember sitting in a public library in 1964 and reading volumes of material published by Bell Labs on the topic. No doubt a lot of entrepreneurs has been working on a scheme to use digital sound as a solution that need multiple problems to solve. Cell phone. CDs were our first visible results we could tangibly see. Computer games made use of digital sound.

I agree considerably with the thrust of this thread: broadcasting as we know it has begun decomposing into something less than we know it could be. Someone invented HD radio because radio as we know it was so sick it was already on its deathbed..... I don't think so.

Wal-Mart wasn't "invented" because home-town retailing was sick and dying. Wal-Mart was the aggressive application of something others had already invented, Sam Walton began looking for markets that looked like they needed something better than they had. For him it worked, For Ibiquity, the jury is still out.

 

[Chuck]

I agree considerably with the thrust of this thread: broadcasting as we know it has begun decomposing into something less than we know it could be. Someone invented HD radio because radio as we know it was so sick it was already on its deathbed..... I don't think so.

Wal-Mart wasn't "invented" because home-town retailing was sick and dying. Wal-Mart was the aggressive application of something others had already invented, Sam Walton began looking for markets that looked like they needed something better than they had. For him it worked, For Ibiquity, the jury is still out.

Automation was invented to allow small (usually FM) stations to broadcast 24/7 with little or no staff. In the early days, "FM" more or less stood for "Forget Money." Having a full time staff to operate a marginal station just wasn't economically feasible. The good news is automation brought high quality programming to areas that otherwise wouldn't have it. It was an answer to a problem that broadcasters had. It still answers that problem.

Please don't get the idea that I think automation is somehow better than live programming. It is not a simple good versus bad argument. For a station with limited resources, it can be a superior choice. Not everyone in broadcasting is a multi-million dollar corporation with deep pockets. Good automation beats bad live talent. Excellent live talent beats automation. Unfortunately, not everyone can have "excellent" talent. Some markets simply can't support it.

I tend to like inventions that are answers to problems. That was the genius of Thomas Edison. He systematically looked at problems and then invented things he could sell that would solve those problems. Today, a lot of inventions seem to be "answers to questions that nobody had." HD radio may be one of those, but that's a topic for another Forum.

By the way, the French were early pioneers in cars. They built some steam powered vehicles way before anyone else. Even so, the prize for first gasoline powered car seems to go to Gotleib Daimler. The company eventually became Mercedez-Benz. It seems he successfully provided an answer to a problem.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Automation was invented to allow small (usually FM) stations to broadcast 24/7 with little or no staff. In the early days, "FM" more or less stood for "Forget Money." Having a full time staff to operate a marginal station just wasn't economically feasible.

Chuck- that was an excellent post with a lot of good logic. My observations of the industry probably go back 10 to 30 years before yours. I saw a number of automated A.M. stations before I ever saw (or heard) an F.M. station... live or automated, so my mind-set on the topic has a different view of the why and how.

This is following not a challenge to anything in your contributions to this discussion, but a theme I do sense in the various threads on the topic of live vs. automation.

A number of writers see automation as this specific, discrete machine.... a total package of hardware and software from maybe Scott Systems or in the old days from IGM. I see automation in a much broader, abstract way. When the Xerox machine arrived and we could more efficiently create log templates with all the fixed information already in place and we simply wrote in or typed in the variables such as the advertising spots, that was "automation" in a small way. (The first place we did that was before Xerox was available in small office versions. We had a small machine based on the diazo process that produces blue-prints. We had mylar sheets of the template, and the whole blooming station smelled like wet diapers from the ammonia.)

When the cart machine came along and we didn't have to thread that little spool of tape through the heads of the tape deck, and at the end of the broadcast we didn't have to rewind the tape, that was elementary automation. Even at a station that has live announcers 24/7 they are likely to have a server where a distant provider of weather broadcasts, hollywood news and other program bits can FTP audio files into their appointed slot so the LIVE announcer can activate it at the push of a button.... errr, make that Clock-of-the-Mouse and that too is part of automation.

I don't see stations as automated and non-automated. I see them as minimally automated, somewhat automated, strongly automated, radically automated etc.

 

[Chuck]

My observations of the industry probably go back 10 to 30 years before yours. I saw a number of automated A.M. stations before I ever saw (or heard) an F.M. station... live or automated, so my mind-set on the topic has a different view of the why and how.

Although it was FM, the first station I ever worked at had three Magnecord PT-6 tape decks, two turntables and one microphone. That was it. There were no carts, and certainly nothing that looked remotely like automation. Logs were done on a manual Underwood typewriter. At the time a computer took up an entire building, so I can appreciate your point of view.

The problem was, it wasn't very good radio. At my low level of experience and $1.25 per hour salary, the best thing I could do was shut up and play records. This station was very small and under funded. Automation would have been quite an asset back then, even if it was two reel to reel tape decks and a cart machine. Of course, that could have easily replaced me. I'm not sure if the world is better or worse because of that.

I just don't look at automation as either good or evil and I'd urge other people to look at it that way as well. It's just a tool, and how people choose to use it makes all the difference. I'll emphasize "people" because it takes creative minds and talented people to use automation effectively. I've heard some stations that do it quite well, and I've heard others that were very miserable examples. The same goes for live or live assist radio. Good talented people tend to do good radio, regardless of the delivery means.

 

[firepoint525]

In todays business, where competition between station has more or less become a moot subject due to corporate station clusters, automation will become more and more the norm. In ten years I doubt you will see live jocks anywhere. Mornings and afternoons will be syndicated, the other daysparts either also syndicated, or voice tracked. With today's digital studio, and lack of need for real ratings (with cluster ownership) why would a company not have just one staff announcer who could voice track the stations 24 hours of programming in an hour (or even ALL the cluster's stations)?
Cumulas, Clear channel and the rest love cutting talent positions.

Wouldn't it be sort of one-dimensional with just one guy doing all the local voice work? You need a variety of voices (certainly more than one) to keep it interesting.

 

[firepoint525]

Personally, radio automation to me has it's place, but it's not a resting place. "For temporary use only" is the catch phrase of the day.

Voicetracking does not solve anything. When it came out, people were thinking "WOW! Now we don't have to hire weekend people!" That sounded delicious and it was.....until everybody started doing it. Then it provoked violent attacks of yawning. Slowly, radio became aural wallpaper.

Now you have freak thunderstorms while your voicetracked announcer is gloating about all this wonderful weather we're having today. You have ammonia/gas leaks and earthquakes happening while your voicetracked announcer is jawing about Britney Spears's latest meltdown.
Not saying it always ends this way with voicetracking, but there's been quite a few instances when it has. And the mere possiblility that it CAN happen to you is scary enough. The arguement that "This system will make good jocks better, and bad jocks unemployed" can also translate into "This system can also make bad jocks heroes, and bad station owners bankrupt", given the right alignment of the planets.

The other problem is the very fact that aside from voicers and spots, with automated radio, you're just listening to somebody else's crummy iPod. Anyone who has visions of a day when there will be no live jocks had better be careful of what they anticipate; If a computer can replace a live jock, it can also replace a live programmer. And we're almost at that frightening stage as we speak in the current state of affairs we have in the radio industry.

This radio biz is imploding - there's no denying that. And if it was all great radio we've been having the last twenty years, then why would we even need XM/Sirius, Music Choice/DMX, web radio, iPods, microbroadcasters, LPFMs or other forms of traditional radio alternatives? Automation I feel is part of that problem (to say nothing of lousy re-re-re-re-re-re-recycled liners and formats.) Local radio is supposed to be live. That's what seperates it from all the competing formats and that's already visible on the most successful local radio stations. So maybe there's a place to start if we're going to turn this pig around.

Another thing: Forget what you were taught in the '90s about successful programming - it doesn't work in 2008. At all.

A slightly more mundane example of this: on a Friday evening on a radio station in Murray, Kentucky, that was satellite-automated, the satellite announcer started a countdown of the week's top 10 hits that was never finished. The station interrupted it because it was time for high school football! Now I suppose we could question the wisdom of carrying local high school football over a 100,000 watt FM station (which is what they did, and what they were), but as others have said on here, that is a topic for another day. ;D

 

[firepoint525]

Part of the discussion of program automation is like the two salesmen getting into an argument over whether the glass is half empty or half full.

If you have hired a person 500 miles away to do the voice tracking and it is a side job for the, they are probably not avaailable on those few days when the weather turns surprising or the gas main breaks to do a quickie do-over.

Those kind of days don't happen often. If your voice tracking is done by a local person, a person who has other duties at the station (maybe even ownership) then..... a properly thought out automation system would make it possible for someone to dash into the station, or even from a studio in their home, create timely replacement voice tracks to fit the changed weather or the local emergency.
I know of one North Georgia FM station that will switch to live assist in a heart-beat with one of the owners doing traffic or weather or catastrophe coverage just like he would have when he was a pup 40 years ago. I don't get the idea they are going broke!

Second thought: bad programming did not create the need and demand for new sources of distribution such as sattelite radio, etc. This was just technology looking for an opportunity to exist. Technicians/engineers/sceintists created a new tool and said: "Viola, we have a new tool. What can we do to make it useful so we can sell tools and make money. Someone said: Let's pretend we are radio and see if anybody likes it. I would agree that POOR programming let them become part of the mix too easily. It was not FAILED programming that drove people to go and create a new technology just for the sake of filling the vacuum left by failed programming.

That is like saying trucks were only invented because railroads had failed. Henry Ford did not sit down one afternoon and invent the car and then a beefed up version called the truck because the railroad industry had collapsed and left a vacuum!

In the early '90s, I worked for an AM/FM combo in which the FM had been automated almost continuously from the time it came on the air! (1968, I believe)

We locally voice-tracked it ourselves. The manager had us read these stupid celebrity stories over the air about once an hour. : I hated them because they were stupid, but worse yet, the listeners called in to complain about them!

Anyway, on September 4th, 1991, I did a story about Dottie West and Kenny Rogers, and how Rogers hoped to record more duets with her once she got out of the hospital following her injuries from the car wreck she had been in the previous weekend while heading to the Grand Ole Opry. Well, that never happened, because she died that day! :'( Fortunately, I was able to pull that celebrity story that I did about her before it ever had the chance to hit the air. I had also given our news director the wire copies of the news about her death just as soon as it came over the wire. And she (the news director) updated the news later that hour. It would have sounded awfully stupid if I had not been able to pull my celebrity story about Dottie West, after our news director had already announced over the air that Dottie West had died!

 

[ruger22com]

Wouldn't it be sort of one-dimensional with just one guy doing all the local voice work? You need a variety of voices (certainly more than one) to keep it interesting.

Nope, and a LOTof stations already do it with nothing more than an "Image voice". Do I like it? hell no! But thanks to the business changing to cluster ownership where ratings mean little and gm's selling group buys...personality is becoming a thing of the past beyond drive time.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Wouldn't it be sort of one-dimensional with just one guy doing all the local voice work? You need a variety of voices (certainly more than one) to keep it interesting.

Nope, and a LOTof stations already do it with nothing more than an "Image voice". Do I like it? hell no! But thanks to the business changing to cluster ownership where ratings mean little and gm's selling group buys...personality is becoming a thing of the past beyond drive time.

What good would it be to have a variety of voices if none of the voices were "interesting"? What would be the problem of one voice all day long if the owner of the voice had the ability to sit and create tracks that were interesting and brought variety to the thread?

I'm sorry. I lost my head there. You might have to pay $1.50 to 2.00 an hour more to get some one to do voicing that also had some creative juices in their blood. Now I have really misplaced my head: WHAT, what if you had TWO people sitting there..... no... have them standing there.... taking turn about and occasional co-mingling their voices. Is that still legal in radio?

 

[PTBoardOp94]

Is that still legal in radio?

Only between the hours of 6am and 10am, or when one of the participants is a caller.