londonmidland
Established Member
A couple of years ago, Greater Anglia made the first move to switch from the industry standard and widely used (ATOS) Wordline system, to a text-to-speech announcement system, offered by Blackbox. WMT soon followed around a year later and both TOCs now utilise TTS announcements. I believe this was an Abellio decision, as that's who was managing the TOCs at the time of the switchover.
Ever since WMT switched over to Text-to-Speech announcements at their stations, I have noticed a steady increase in custom made messages being announced. At Nuneaton, as well as other mainline WMT managed stations, it isn't uncommon to hear announcements playing every 5 minutes, throughout pretty much the entire day - these consist of engineering works notices, industrial action, no smoking or vaping, no cycling or running, mind the gap, wet weather and more, amongst the usual train services announcements. All of these announcements are made by this same computerised/AI generated voice, which quickly become annoying as there's nothing to differentiate the messages being advertised. It seems as if WMT no longer use their members of staff to record custom messages, and fully rely on text-to-speech to announce everything, very frequently. I can't talk much about GA stations in this instance, as I don't/have never really regularly visit them over the years, so don't have much experience of how they manage it.
Previously, the main train announcements were made by Anne, with custom announcements being voiced by actual members of WMT staff. This made a nice variation between any 'usual' announcements and custom made ones. The latter regarding special notices was also announced at a far less frequency than it is now.
Now I get that text-to-speech has its advantages, such as entering whatever message you like for it to announce it, without having to get someone to physically record it for you, as well as being cheaper to run, however I feel like there needs to be a balance.
I may be making a mountain out of a molehill, however has anyone else experienced the same since both TOCs switched over?
Ever since WMT switched over to Text-to-Speech announcements at their stations, I have noticed a steady increase in custom made messages being announced. At Nuneaton, as well as other mainline WMT managed stations, it isn't uncommon to hear announcements playing every 5 minutes, throughout pretty much the entire day - these consist of engineering works notices, industrial action, no smoking or vaping, no cycling or running, mind the gap, wet weather and more, amongst the usual train services announcements. All of these announcements are made by this same computerised/AI generated voice, which quickly become annoying as there's nothing to differentiate the messages being advertised. It seems as if WMT no longer use their members of staff to record custom messages, and fully rely on text-to-speech to announce everything, very frequently. I can't talk much about GA stations in this instance, as I don't/have never really regularly visit them over the years, so don't have much experience of how they manage it.
Previously, the main train announcements were made by Anne, with custom announcements being voiced by actual members of WMT staff. This made a nice variation between any 'usual' announcements and custom made ones. The latter regarding special notices was also announced at a far less frequency than it is now.
Now I get that text-to-speech has its advantages, such as entering whatever message you like for it to announce it, without having to get someone to physically record it for you, as well as being cheaper to run, however I feel like there needs to be a balance.
I may be making a mountain out of a molehill, however has anyone else experienced the same since both TOCs switched over?
