Last week the owner of Moberly, Missouri radio stations KWIX and KRES —Alpha Media— laid off all of their on-air staff. (Bob Priddy mourns)
The following is from a post and interview I did in 2007 with Dave Shepherd, the son of the man who put KWIX/KRES on the air.
Fifty years ago, Jerrell Shepherd mastered a form of broadcasting alchemy that turned small town radio lead into gold. It wasn’t much of a secret, however, since he readily shared it with countless radio station owners and managers who made the pilgrimage to Moberly, Missouri, in hopes of bringing some of Shepherd’s sales and programming magic back to their stations.
While most small market broadcasters were content to get “their fair share” of local advertising budgets (the bulk went to the local newspaper), Shepherd’s sales reps were trained to ask for it all and believed in their hearts they deserved it.
Mr. Shepherd’s approach to programming his stations was deceptively simple: report anything and everything that happened in each of the communities covered by his stations’ signals. The KWIX and KRES “Red Rovers” showed up just about every high school football game, junior high choral concert and chamber of commerce ribbon-cutting. And the Shepherd stations put it all on the air. Always with local sponsors. Lots of local sponsors.
The new owner, Alpha Media, owns a lot of radio stations including KBFF Live 95.5 FM in Portland, OR. Last June the station introduced the first AI-powered DJ, “AI Ashley.”
“Alpha Media’s EVP of content Phil Becker assured listeners that Elzinga’s job is safe and she’ll be receiving the same pay, telling TechCrunch that AI Ashley is a tool that will allow DJs to multitask like never before.”
I’d love to know what sort of prompt could result in an AI making a call and interacting with a listener as we heard in the clip above. As the program director of a small town radio station back in the 1970’s I was responsible for hiring and training weekend talent. I might have jumped at the chance to put an AI voice on the air.
Will the KWIX/KRES on-air staff be replaced with AI voices? If so, how will the station’s listeners and advertisers respond?