That radio DJ you hear might already be a robot

[mahatmakanejeeves]

December 3, 2021
6:26 AM EST
Last Updated 6 days ago

Technology

That radio DJ you hear might already be a robot

By Jane Lanhee Lee and Rollo Ross

OAKLAND/LOS ANGELES, Calif., Dec 2 (Reuters) - Andy Chanley, the afternoon drive host at Southern California's public radio station 88.5 KCSN, has been a radio DJ for over 32 years. And now, thanks to artificial intelligence technology, his voice will live on simultaneously in many places.

"I may be a robot, but I still love to rock," says the robot DJ named ANDY, derived from Artificial Neural Disk-JockeY, in Chanley's voice, during a demonstration for Reuters where the voice was hard to distinguish from a human DJ.

{snip}

[Wah_Guy]

1. Not entirely new

An awful lot of radio stations are automated and have been for decades. DJs would pre-record various blurbs, dub them onto cartridges, and place them in certain slots in the automation equipment. Back announcing, front announcing, local weather, local news, all could be inserted so they would play automatically, and at the proper time (theoretically). The use of AI is new, but the base concept is the same. Case in point, I was Program Director for a Columbia, SC station in the '70s. I drove through the area while on vacation in the '80s, several years after I was out of radio, and heard one of my old legal/top-of-the-hour station identifications. That was an odd experience.

[rsdsharp]

2. Lol. That's a pretty long time for a carted ID to last, but it can happen.

I worked at an automated station (Drake Chennault) that used a carted liner/jingle pair into and out of stop sets. The jingle package was from before the station went automated several years before, and I never even saw the master tape for the jingles, so they weren’t being recarted.

It was bad enough that guys were having to voice track shows for markets they never worked in. Now they don’t even need real jocks to do that.

[slightlv]

3. I used to build the computers from scratch that the stations used

then load the software, spots, music, and make sure they were tuned correctly. Loved the job. Hated the boss. (gryn)