Denise Shackelford, founder of the Primacy Law Firm and legal counsel for Country Radio Broadcasters, addressed the growing risk of voice duplication during a CRS360 workshop. She cautioned that many current broadcast employment agreements offer little protection against stations retaining and replicating a personality’s voice after their departure. //Shackelford illustrated the threat with a scenario where a terminated morning host moves to a competing station, only to hear a synthetic replica of his own voice still broadcasting on his former frequency. “Even if the station is setting this up as morning show Mike 2.0 and confessing to the audience that this is, in fact, a voice clone of Mike, that still is not going to be great for Mike. He did not get his job renewed, and yet they’re still having him on the air,” Shackelford said.
To mitigate this risk, Shackelford advised that contracts must explicitly prohibit a station from using or cloning a personality’s voice after their employment ends. //The legal guidance comes as anxiety over automation grows among industry professionals. According to the AQ6 survey released by Jacobs Media, 77 percent of on-air personalities are worried about losing their jobs to artificial intelligence. //Beyond voice cloning, Shackelford urged on-air talent to view themselves as independent brands and secure ownership over their creative content. She noted that jingles, catchphrases, and other on-air material typically fall under the work-made-for-hire doctrine, meaning the station owns the intellectual property by default unless the contract includes specific carveouts.
Regarding restrictions on future employment, Shackelford observed that the legal landscape is shifting in favor of talent. “Our courts are more and more kind of pushing back on non-competes. They want them narrowly defined, narrowly in terms of geographically, and then narrow also in terms of the time,” she said.
Source: Country Radio Broadcasters