Comment by hotsauceror

I don't have a good answer for why they haven't already. I have wondered about the possibility of doing this for 10 years or more.

"The data that on-air personalities are too expensive?" It doesn't seem to me , for the purposes of this conversation, that identification of a cost center required a quantitative analysis. The cost of human talent is non-zero, presumably large enough to merit scrutiny, and unpredictable; that is sufficient, to my way of thinking. So is the cost of the equipment and infrastructure to capture and transmit video image of that human talent, and the humans who maintain and operate that infrastructure.

We've seen several decades of human cost-reduction initiatives, across multiple industries and fields of endeavor, so I'm taking that as evidence that if there is a cost that can be reduced or removed, someone somewhere is looking at doing so. Everything from assembly-line automation, to switching to email over inter-office memos and mailrooms, to the abandonment of fixed-benefit pensions, to self-service kiosks in fast-food restaurants, demonstrates that costs will be cut where they can be cut.