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certainot

(9,090 posts)
Mon Oct 8, 2018, 02:21 PM Oct 2018

Artificial intelligence will force ad industry to kill RW radio. Dems can accelerate the process.

Republican talk radio just did to Christine Blasey Ford what it did to Anita Hill, with the same result. Limbaugh led the attack and intimidation this time the same way he did then.

As a 20-1 monopoly, Republican talk radio has influenced the free speech spectrum while hiding outside of it. It yells whatever its directors want while escaping direct competition from those who would challenge and correct it.

‘Artificial intelligence’ changes everything. AI recently made it exponentially easier, faster, and cheaper to transcribe/digitize spoken word.

It is now inevitable that talk radio will become a subject for monitoring and study by media and political organizations, as well as university political science and communications departments. It will be monitored for patterns and repetition on local, regional, and national levels. Its part in creating and pumping ‘fake news’ into the mainstream and establishing alternate realities can be studied. Coordination with Russian trolling may be exposed. It will finally be forced into the free speech spectrum and exposed as a major factor in the decline of democracy and the corruption of the Republican Party. Like cigarettes were to cancer.

That could take a while if left alone but AI transcription also guarantees inevitable democratization of political talk radio by politicizing its advertising. The 30 year Limbaugh era is over as soon as the advertising industry gets the message that the future of radio advertising is at stake. No new Fairness Doctrine needed.

With a little help that could happen quickly. Greatly improved and cheaper transcription makes it very easy for individuals and organizations to list advertisers and their contact information and associate them with content. Very little listening required. The advertising industry needs to know.

The small scale StopRush and FlushRush activism in defense of Sandra Fluke after Limbaugh attacked her in 2012 showed how easy it was to get advertisers to go elsewhere. If the radio advertising industry doesn’t get in front of it, AI transcription could be used to amp up that event x 100. Anything could trigger it, like the recent attacks on Kavanaugh accusers. Ad agencies could lose a lot of customers very quickly.

There are 1000s of advertisers that will not want their customers to know they just sponsored 3 weeks of talk radio blowhards calling Dr Ford a ‘Democrat’ operative and paid actor/liar, who used a ‘baby’ voice to gain sympathy, like Limbaugh claimed. Many company employees, management, and owners would not like their companies to be associated with that.

1000s of advertisers will pay for the next 4 weeks of lies, racism, global warming denial, excuses for trump and separating immigrant families, and “deep state” anti-Mueller attacks. Those advertisers are funding daily attacks on Democratic candidates and selling Republican candidates and their agenda. Many of them don’t know what they’re sponsoring.

Anyone who has contacted Republican radio advertisers knows their support for it is soft. Many of them are not aware they were on those shows, had been told by their ad agency they wouldn’t be on those shows, didn’t know how bad the lies and hate were, it was part of a broader package deal they had no control over, they thought the talkers were just political entertainers, they didn’t think anyone felt so strongly about it, and so on. Very few will admit they like it.

Even without a major boycott action that threat to the radio advertising industry can’t be ignored. It needs to be notified. Can anyone write a press release?

Democrats and other Ford supporters can go on offense and speed up the process in time to impact the midterms. Those radio stations will do a lot of invisible dirty work, political correctness policing and intimidation, and media manipulation for Trump and the GOP. All of it basically free, paid for by those advertisers, and largely invisible to those it is used against. Republican politicians are very aware of that. Their leadership likes watching Democrats and the media chase each other in circles while they swing away with their invisible political 2x4. At $1000/hr 1200 stations x 15hrs/day is worth $18M/day, $90M/week, and about $5B/year.

Knowing they’re going to lose their talk radio advantage by 2020 will inhibit those who might want to go all the way supporting Trump and encourage those who might want to cross him. And there may be many Republican politicians who would enjoy not being pushed around by the talk radio gods, who increasingly might as well be serving foreign interests. And it sounds like more and more real conservatives might like the idea.

The advertising industry just needs to be informed.

From republiconradio.org:

Artificial intelligence now makes it very easy to list talk radio advertisers
1) Record
Quicktime, on every Mac, is a basic app for recording audio streams. While playing the stream turn on Quicktime, go to 'File' and 'New Audio Recording'. Turn on the recorder and when you're done save it. With Quicktime it is necessary to have volume on. Other recording apps will allow recording multiple streams at the same time, pre scheduling, and editing.
2) Transcribe
At $5/hr and under, Sonix.ai may be the cheapest, quickest, and easiest transcription service. An hour takes minutes and is very accurate. When it's done they send an email with a link to the transcription in their editing program where it can be downloaded or tweaked and corrected on their site as you listen. It can also be stored there. The monthly subscription is $15 but they offer a 30 minutes free trial.
3) Search for "DOT" to identify advertisers
Live recordings of radio streams include advertisements and most announce web sites transcribed as "so-and-so-company dot com". Most advertisers can be found by searching for the word "dot". Sometimes the ads provided phone numbers. The Sonix text editor allows you to highlight and add notes. Each company or quote can get a note that is listed and numbered. The notes can then be copied and pasted elsewhere.
4) Contact
Most websites provide phone numbers and email addresses specifically for contact by potential customers. Complaint emails may get further up the chain of command than a phone call, and there's a lasting written record for employees to pass around. It may also be easier for sympathetic staff to pass on a comment to a boss in email form than personally.

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lapfog_1

(29,226 posts)
1. don't most right wing radio sites carry syndicated programming?
Mon Oct 8, 2018, 02:39 PM
Oct 2018

Rush Limpballs on 1000 different stations every day?

So I'm guessing that one could already have a person listening to the syndicated programming and get a transcript out to internet for debunking, boycotts of advertisers, Russian propaganda content checking, etc.

Using something like maybe only a staff of 50 to 100 people?

How is AI a game changer? Why isn't this being done now. Surely Tom Steyer could hire 100 not all that well paid "almost volunteers" to to do the task outlined here.

Don't get me wrong, I helped to invent the internet. I've been in the forefront of "big data" for decades (long before there were all these marketing terms for what was being done). I'd love for there to be a technological magic bullet to defeat the right.

I remain skeptical that this is it.

 

certainot

(9,090 posts)
2. limbaugh has more like 600 stations, but he and his dittoheads keep them all
Mon Oct 8, 2018, 03:18 PM
Oct 2018

in line. there may be another 1000 or so without him but following his lead.

a lot of stations are a combination of a few syndicated national blowhards and some local blowhards and they all follow the same lines - enforcing the real political correctness while accusing others who disagree with them of it

once ad agencies get the message they're going to have to segregate rw hate vs other advertising.

and the way they load up their local programming with ads sometimes suggests they may already have a lot of radio advertisers trying to avoid limbaugh. it's all KKK-lite and pro trump - they need to be avoiding those stations all together.

brooklynite

(94,741 posts)
3. Sorry, but I don't see the point of discussing AI...
Mon Oct 8, 2018, 03:23 PM
Oct 2018

It's not particularly hard to find out who's advertising on a radio station carrying Rush or any other RW talker. And absent a major faux pas, I don't get the impression that you'll be able to launch a major boycott of any of them.

 

certainot

(9,090 posts)
4. a sample of one hour of
Mon Oct 8, 2018, 03:46 PM
Oct 2018

limbaugh would associate those advertisers with, for eg, him mocking victims of sexual assault, for eg.

or a local blowhard suggesting a 'purge' solution for sanctuary cities, for eg.

ThoughtCriminal

(14,049 posts)
5. There are advertisers that LOVE the RW radio audience
Mon Oct 8, 2018, 04:06 PM
Oct 2018

Looking for gullible, easily conned customers? RW radio has the perfect match.

 

certainot

(9,090 posts)
7. penile enhancement formulas, divorce lawyers, steroids, religious organizations
Mon Oct 8, 2018, 06:23 PM
Oct 2018

and so on, and some business owners are trumpers

but there are a lot of advertisers that end up there because they bought package deals, etc., or had no clue what they were sponsoring, believed the bullshit sales pitch about the talkers just being political entertainers, of that's the station that plays the state uni sports, etc.

i suspect many of those would be fine with more balanced programming or something else on the same station, especially in blue areas, often with no liberal talk shows and overlapping multiple rw shows.

Thekaspervote

(32,796 posts)
6. For those that have not directly dealt with AI on a website or other online business...I'm here to
Mon Oct 8, 2018, 04:07 PM
Oct 2018

Tell you it changes everything! This is good... very good

 

certainot

(9,090 posts)
8. i used to try to get recordings transcribed with high end software - it sucked
Mon Oct 8, 2018, 06:56 PM
Oct 2018

it's so much faster, more accurate, and cheaper now

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