algorithm – TALKERS magazine

Is the Algorithm Your New Program Director?

By TALKERS | August 12, 2026 by TALKERS

By Matthew B. Harrison
TALKERS, VP/Associate Publisher
Harrison Legal Group, Senior Partner
Goodphone Communications, Executive Producer

You post five clips from yesterday’s program. Four do fine. The fifth, an argument with a caller, explodes. It gets more views, more comments, more shares and more click time than anything else you posted.

So tomorrow you post another argument.

That one performs too. Before long, you are clipping more confrontations because confrontation travels. Then maybe the show itself begins to change. You stay on the angry topic a little longer. You take the provocative call you might once have dumped. You learn what gets rewarded.

Nobody at YouTube, Facebook or TikTok called and told you to make an angrier show. The algorithm did not order you to do anything. It simply showed you what produced a reaction, and you reacted to the reward.

Radio people have seen versions of this forever. The phones light up, so we stay with the topic. A feature appears to perform well in PPM, so it gets another quarter hour. Ratings rise, so management asks for more of whatever seems to be working.

Digital distribution makes that feedback faster, more visible and harder to ignore. It also adds another wrinkle: the platform may use strong engagement to give the next clip more distribution. The reward is not just a good number on a report. It may be a bigger audience tomorrow.

That makes analytics tremendously useful. They can show what attracts attention, what holds audience and what helps people discover your program. But a measurement tool can become a programming influence if you start chasing every spike.

A good host learns from the audience without becoming a hostage to it. A good programmer knows what works without assuming that whatever gets the biggest reaction is automatically the best show.

Use the algorithm to distribute your work. Learn from what it tells you. Make money wherever the audience finds you.

Just don’t appoint it the role of program director.

For the larger discussion of ratings, PPM and digital distribution, read The Algorithm Is Listening at TALKERS.com here.

Matthew B. Harrison, associate publisher of TALKERS, is a media and intellectual property attorney who advises radio hosts, content creators, and creative entrepreneurs. He has written extensively on fair use, AI law, and the future of digital rights. Reach him at Matthew@HarrisonLegalGroup.com or read more at TALKERS.com.

Industry Views

The Algorithm Knows What You Did But It Doesn’t Know Why

By TALKERS | August 10, 2026August 10, 2026 by TALKERS

By Matthew B. Harrison
TALKERS, VP/Associate Publisher
Harrison Legal Group, Senior Partner
Goodphone Communications, Executive Producer

A viewer watches the same political clip three times. The platform sees a powerful signal: this person stopped, stayed, and came back. What it cannot reliably know is whether the viewer loved the argument, hated it, was factchecking it, or was showing it to someone else in disbelief. The algorithm knows a viewer watched. It does not necessarily know why. That is why YouTube looks beyond viewing itself to other signals of appeal, engagement, and satisfaction.

That distinction matters to broadcasters because digital analytics can look much more intelligent than they really are. An algorithm can measure behavior with extraordinary precision, but behavior is not motive. PPM taught radio a version of the same lesson. Nielsen’s meter can passively detect exposure to encoded audio, but the resulting audience measurement cannot tell a programmer why someone listened or why audience levels changed.

Livestreaming creates the opposite problem. Instead of too little explanation, the host suddenly gets too much of it. The chat is moving. People are demanding another topic, praising a guest, attacking a caller, or announcing that the segment is dying.

That feedback is valuable, but the people typing are not necessarily representative of the people listening. Radio hosts should already understand this because callers have never represented the entire audience. They represent the portion motivated enough to pick up the telephone. Livestream chat is the same phenomenon at digital speed.

The danger comes when these two imperfect signals reinforce each other. The dashboard says engagement jumped. The chat says, “More of this.” A host can easily conclude that the audience has spoken when what actually happened is that a particularly active portion of the audience became particularly visible.

Good broadcasters have always listened to the audience without surrendering the show to it. Digital tools make that listening faster and more detailed, but they do not eliminate the need for judgment.

The algorithm knows what people did. The chat tells you what some people said. The programmer still has to decide what either one means.

For the larger discussion of ratings, PPM, algorithms and digital distribution, read The Algorithm Is Listening here: https://talkers.com/category/industry-views/

Matthew B. Harrison is a media and intellectual property attorney who advises radio hosts, content creators, and creative entrepreneurs. He has written extensively on fair use, AI law, and the future of digital rights. Reach him at Matthew@HarrisonLegalGroup.com or read more at TALKERS.com.