One of the things we’ve historically done in radio that never sat well with me is how we often identify someone within our groups that excels in one area and we make them the go to person for that. I’m sure you’ve all said or heard this before, ‘She is our graphics girl’, ‘meet our website guy’ or ‘we just hired a social media girl’. This practice allows everyone on staff to avoid learning any of those things and pushing it all on to one person’s plate. Then if that person takes another job, gets sick or just takes a vacation everything grinds to a halt until someone else steps up. AI has become the latest example of that practice. Far too many radio groups, and companies outside of radio as well, have labeled one individual within the operation as their ‘AI person’ responsible for utilizing the latest greatest AI tools. That’s great for the growth of that individual, provided they understand their value, but terrible for the operation overall because it holds back the growth of the entire group. Here are some thoughts on fixing that.
Just like creating digital content (website articles, social posts, podcast episodes and video) should be part of the job now, so should utilizing AI tools. We’ve long surpassed the point where refusing to should be acceptable. It’s impossible for employees who don’t use AI to compete with the AI enhanced humans that do use them. Plus, like a lot of services and products radio pays for monthly, the company gets charged for them whether they are utilized or not. When owners and operators see tools that cost the company money that aren’t being used, they are reluctant to invest in other areas of the business that need upgrades.
In addition to Radio Content Pro, Riverside and other clipping tools, I’ve seen a lot of great new radio-specific AI tools recently. But, all of them can either be set up where one person in the operation uses them and everything funnels through them or everyone uses them for the specific purposes that pertain to their job. My preference is the latter because A) it eliminates the bottle neck of going through one person and B) it gets all of the staff comfortable with using an AI tool. In my experience learning new AI tools gets progressively easier each time since a lot of them are built on the same back-ends and similar workflows. Plus, the fear of AI goes down significantly once a person sees the amount of time they can save and how it can be used to plug holes in areas where we’re weak and even speed up the areas where we excel.
Do all AI tools make mistakes? Yes, absolutely. Especially when they are asked to do something for the first time. But, that’s not a reason to stop using them (and believe me employees will use a single incident of a mistake as an excuse to never use something again). It’s a reason to double check the work by reading, listening to it or watching it in it’s entirety before hitting publish, scheduling a post or putting something on the air.
What do you think? Does your group have an AI person or is everyone on staff encouraged to learn and use AI tools? Comment below or email me at Andy@RadioStationConsultant.com.
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