We’re seeing this more and more from radio, and that’s a good thing, with the popularity of these home devices growing, especially Amazon’s Echo. Impact Radio Group in Boise (Market #97) has launched a companywide initiative to bring radio back into the home. Impact CEO Darrell Calton said, “While we were not the first radio station or group to add an Alexa skill for listening, we are certainly one of the few and very proud to stand at the forefront of what may be an in home resurgence in radio listening.
Users of the Alexa platform begin by using a simple start phrase “Alexa enable Impact Radio. Then users can then say, “Alexa ask Impact Radio to play 96.1 BOB-FM”, for instance. A listener can choose from seven different radio stations by name and the radio station starts immediately streaming music and content.
Calton said, “With the massive popularity of Amazon’s Echo we felt that there was an opportunity to get the radio stations back into the home in a place of prominence as they once were. We started the process nearly six months ago working with a brilliant local Idaho developer. The ease and simplicity of the interface they created is phenomenal. After using it for just a few days during the beta testing, I was wishing I could bring the ease of voice control into the car radio,”
