Artificial intelligence can destroy talk radio giants iHeart and Cumulus. Before the elections?

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Liberty Media, which owns SyriusXM and a few other well known businesses may bail out iHeart Media, which used to be Clearchannel. iHeart and Cumulus own a lot of very loud Trump/NRA/GOP talk radio stations and they are both in trouble, with iHeart facing bankruptcy any day.

Liberty is owned by John Malone who, according to wiki, donated US$ 250,000 to Donald Trump's inauguration in 2017

Malone is a smart businessman and maybe like some Republicans he’ll figure out he got had by a Russian stooge but if iHeart keeps going as usual there’s not much chance those radio stations are going to do anything different before the elections, other than supporting Trump/Putin/GOP.

Unless artificial intelligence democratizes talk radio.

Thanks to AI, companies like Sonix.ai can transcribe an hour of talk radio for $5 in less than an hour and according to them they can even handle 50 hours at a time from one customer. It used to cost $50 or more per hour and take a day or longer, mainly because of training (for different speakers) and corrections. Now it’s almost error free depending on the quality of the recording.

That means that instead of having to get sick listening to hours of talk radio and then researching business contact information activists only have to record it and drop it in the ‘box’ at Sonix.ai. They send an email when it’s done. It can be left on their servers and accessed and searched using their own handy text application.

Being able to digitize talk radio means the names, phone numbers, web sites, and email addresses of the businesses advertising on it are right there in print and they can be sent actual quotes from the shows they just sponsored.

How many advertisers, universities, and pro sports teams will keep supporting Trump/Putin talk radio?

Artificial intelligence ends talk radio’s best defense — it’s invisibility. Who needs a new Fairness Doctrine if the hate and lies and repetition can be read and monitored and associated with the advertisers that pay for it?

Advertising agencies will notice that advertising on talk radio can be completely politicized. Unless they’re big Trump supporters, big advertisers who want to stay with talk radio will start asking for political balance. They will no longer be able to pretend that Limbaugh and sons fit into the wide free speech spectrum and are just political entertainers being ‘controversial’ and ‘outrageous’ to attract listeners as opposed to being part of a well coordinated propaganda operation used to create made-to-order constituencies to stop progressive reform and sell global warming denial, war, deregulation, tax breaks for billionaires, and voter suppression.

Republicans cannot maintain a 95% monopoly of talk radio if they have to open up to actual competition.

Fast, accurate, and low cost transcription means Republican talk radio can now be democratized.

Here’s more, and some of the benefits from getting Republican talk radio transcribed.