How Listeners Feel About AI Jocks

NuVoodoo Research has released programming and marketing micro-tactics from NuVoodoo Ratings Prospects Study 23 in a second season of Moneyball for Radio. 

New videos are released every Thursday at nuvoodoo.com/webinars. The team at NuVoodoo are focusing on the incremental things you can do that can add up to the additional tenth of a rating point that is the goal for stations in rated markets.

With all the news and discussion in the radio trade press last week about using AI talent on the air, they thought it was worthwhile to roll back to last summer’s Ratings Prospects Study 22 in which we looked at how listeners felt about radio using AI voices. 

In that sample of over 2,500 14-54s nationwide interviewed at the end of June 2023, they asked radio listeners how they’d feel if the person hosting a show on a music radio station was:

• Broadcasting live from a studio in their area.
• Pretending to be live but was actually pre-recorded.
• Pretending to be local but is really in a distant city.
• Simulating being human, but is actually an AI voice bot.

Not surprisingly, a strong 58% majority in the chart below felt good about live and local hosting. A small percentage felt bad, presumably because they feel anything but music is bad. Surprisingly, around half didn’t care about hosting that was pre-recorded or piped in from a distant city – but only a small 23% sliver felt good about either of those options.

An AI simulated host appealed to a slightly higher percentage than the pre-recorded or piped-in modes, likely because of the novelty of AI. However, AI hosting got the strongest negative vote at 35%. A 39% plurality just didn’t care about an AI bot hosting the show; it didn’t matter to them. Clearly their expectations from the talent on music radio are not very high, which we found very sad.

Later in the interview, in a grouping of statements they asked respondents to agree or disagree with, we posed, “Most of the DJs on radio stations are computer-generated AI voices.” And across the full sample 27% agreed. 

The number was higher still among men in the sample (32%) and among the more AI-aware Millennials (33%) and Gen Zs (28%).