How artificial intelligence can amp up NRA boycotts, democratize talk radio, doom the GOP.

Transcription services using artificial intelligence recently made it easier and cheaper to convert talk radio to text so it can be archived and searched. The cost dropped by an order of magnitude to less than $5 (eg. Sonix.ai) to transcribe an hour of talk radio.

Transcription with artificial intelligence is faster and more accurate. Faster transcription with fewer corrections makes it easier to automate parts or all of the process of recording multiple radio streams simultaneously and getting the spoken word into a database for search and study. Software developers have an opportunity to make that process easier so that talk radio can finally be included in political analysis.

That means Republican/NRA/Putin talk radio can be monitored and studied without the nausea and pain of actually listening to it. Talk radio will finally become visible to political and media observers.

It also means all advertisers for national and local talk shows can be listed and linked with content. Phone numbers and emails of businesses that sponsor NRA talk radio as it is used to attack the Parkland student activists will be right there in print with a text record of what they sponsored.

Many advertisers, universities, and professional sports teams will not want to be associated with it. Lists of advertisers will be easy to generate and associate, in print, with NRA talking points, global warming denial, lies, racism, sexism, etc. Advertising agencies will no longer be able to sell hate radio as ‘political entertainment’ or ‘news talk’.

When the Republican talk radio monopoly is democratized and reduced to proportions more representative of the country’s political spectrum it will once again be possible to have national discussions based more on facts than distortions and lies.

The GOP and its think tanks and organizations like the NRA will lose their most important media advantage.

Like they did after every previous mass shooting, the NRA and its allies are once again using a few hundred very loud radio talkers to generate ‘popular’ support for easy access to assault weapons and to intimidate any politician who might support legislation controlling them. That is why there was no reform after Sandy Hook, or Columbine. This is an old subject for RW talk radio and they may well be successful again if sane Americans, especially adults who support those students, don’t do something different.

Many stations provide podcasts of the local talkers’ previous shows. Those will demonstrate that since the Parkland massacre they all have been defending the NRA. They have all been defending assault weapons and selling the NRA talking points. Between regular attacks on Robert Mueller and the Clinton/Obama/Soros ‘deep state’ and showing outrage and sorrow, they have all been attacking the Parkland student activists as ignorant, innocent, emotional, and/or childish tools of liberal//Left/Dem ‘enemies of the second amendment’.

Republican talk radio has enjoyed a free speech free ride for 30 years. It has operated as a well protected think tank-scripted messaging monopoly, with a few political correctness cops like Limbaugh guiding and keeping them all in line. It constantly escapes criticism and responsibility and the symptoms and beneficiaries of its messaging and buzz often get the blame — like Fox, Breitbart, and Kremlin trolls.

While its true influence has been impossible to quantify and study consider that if the NRA would pay $1000 for a one hour radio infomercial, 1200 stations doing 15 hours/day are worth about $18MIL/DAY FREE, or $5BIL/YEAR. And have been for 30 years.

When Republican talk radio is available in print it will no longer be invisible to those it attacks. Supporters of Democratic candidates and representatives will be able to monitor the lies and swiftboating from their local blowhards and respond before they become established as ‘fact’.

Republicans will be unable to create alternate realities in which global warming is a hoax and candidates like GW Bush, Sarah Palin, and Donald Trump are ‘acceptable’ in the White House. A few hundred chickenhawks hiding behind call screeners will no longer be able to lie us into illegal wars.

A few of the benefits of converting hate radio into text, or how artificial intelligence means the end of the Republican Party as it is now
If Republican hate radio can be searched for content, patterns, and repetition……

1/ A regular sampling of major national talkers like Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, Levin, Ingraham, and Beck will go a long way to understanding how the alternate reality that so many Americans live in could be created. And discrediting it.

2/ It will be easier to understand what happened to the Republican Party and how people like G W Bush, Sarah Palin, and Donald Trump could even get close to the White house.

3/ Democrats can start winning ‘messaging’ battles. It will be possible to see how Republican think tanks coordinate their radio stations to yell over Democratic messaging on the national and local level.

4/ It will be easier to show the Kremlin coordinating with talk radio. Knowing what the talk radio buzz is will help identify and point out Russian trolling. And who told Trump to study talk radio in 2014 to prep for the elections?

5/ It will be easier to develop boycott lists of advertisers supporting hate radio. Advertisers and advertising companies will become more selective even if they are not subjected to boycotts. Many advertisers will quit hate radio when they realize the global warming denial, racism, sexism, and lies they are associating their brands with can be read and quantified. Dedicated radio advertisers may demand talk stations provide political balance. That will help democratize the well-protected talk radio monopoly, which enjoys an artificially inflated ‘market demand’.

6/ Politicians and media will be less able to repeat Republican lies and talking points as if they represent popular opinion. When they lie they can be answered with “Well, that’s what Limbaugh says but….”

7/ Political campaigns can monitor disinformation and attacks at the national and local level and respond in real time instead of playing catch up. The Democratic Party can monitor radio stations and provide Democratic candidates and their allies with analysis and alerts. Progressive groups or activists can monitor hate radio as it generates opposition or support to counter their particular interests.

8/ Republican politicians, candidates, and think tank propagandists are regular guests on GOP-friendly radio stations and say things they wouldn’t in more public forums. What they say can now be provided to media and used as ammunition for debates and campaign ads.

9/ Americans will be able to determine if the outrage, wherever or whoever it is aimed at, is legitimate popular reaction, or illegitimate — generated by a few think tank-coordinated blowhards with big megaphones hiding behind call screeners.

10/ Republicans will be less able to attack, mischaracterize, and minimize protests. Media and politicians will be less able to ignore protestors just because of a few carnival barkers with giant megaphones can yell over them.

11/ Trump and Putin will be less able to spin national emergencies their way and will feel less confident they can create their own and get away with them.

12/ Republicans will be less able to generate support for illegal wars or anti-democratic legislation. Knowing how often a few hundred talkers on1500 stations were repeating “weapons of mass destruction”, “deregulation will lower cable prices”, “unions donate as much as corporations”, “millions of illegal aliens are voting for Democrats”, “death panels”, “net neutrality raises internet costs”, and “electronic voting machines will save money”, would have been helpful.

13/ And maybe these 77 universities will finally start honoring their mission statements and start looking for alternatives to broadcast sports on.

14/ Discrediting the talk radio gods will help moderate Republicans resist extremism and perhaps help with rational fact-based problem solving. It is not a coincidence that record setting partisanship exploded in the early 90’s after Reagan killed the Fairness Doctrine (‘87) and Republicans built and subsidized their talk radio monopoly. That’s also when ALEC finally began seeing significant success.

15/ As the RW radio monopoly begins to break down more stations will open up for liberal talkers.