The Real Facts About Radio and the Generation We Cannot Afford to Lose – An On The Dial Editorial

I’ve spent more than 30 years in radio, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that our industry has always been remarkably good at defending itself. I’ve sat in programming meetings, corporate meetings, ratings presentations, and strategy sessions where we’ve celebrated audience numbers, debated format adjustments, and talked about the future as though it were something happening somewhere down the road. I’ve watched companies spend enormous amounts of money studying their audiences while simultaneously making decisions that seemed to ignore the very people they were trying to reach. Through all those years, I’ve remained convinced that radio is one of the greatest communications mediums ever created. But loving this business doesn’t mean ignoring what’s happening to it, and sometimes the people who care the most ought to be the ones asking the toughest questions.

We keep hearing two entirely different arguments about radio. One suggests the medium is dying, that younger generations have moved on, and that streaming, podcasts, and social media have made traditional broadcasting increasingly irrelevant. The other proudly points to radio’s massive audience reach and declares that everything is just fine. I’ve never been particularly comfortable with either position because the facts tell a much more complicated story. Radio continues to reach an extraordinary number of Americans, but the way people use it, the amount of time they spend with it, and the role it plays in their daily lives are changing.

And if we don’t understand those differences, we’re going to spend the next decade celebrating numbers that look wonderful on a presentation screen while wondering why the business itself continues to struggle.

According to Nielsen’s Audio Today 2026, AM/FM radio reaches approximately 93% of American adults each month. Among adults ages 18 to 34, monthly reach is approximately 89%. Those are impressive figures, particularly for an industry that has been fighting predictions of its demise since the arrival of satellite radio, portable digital music players, and eventually streaming services.

Think about what that means. With all the entertainment choices available today, nearly nine out of ten younger adults are still being reached by radio during a typical month. That’s not the picture of a medium that has disappeared from people’s lives, and those who insist that nobody listens to radio anymore simply aren’t looking at the evidence.

But here’s where I think we need to have a more intelligent conversation.

Reach is not loyalty, and exposure is not necessarily engagement.

A person who listens to the radio for a few minutes while riding in somebody else’s vehicle can contribute to monthly reach. So can someone who spends several hours every day listening to a favorite station. Both individuals count toward the audience, but their relationships with the medium could hardly be more different.

That’s why I have a problem when somebody uses a reach statistic as the final word on the health of radio. It’s an important number, but it doesn’t tell the entire story. We ought to be just as interested in how frequently people listen, how much time they spend with us, whether they actively choose radio over competing platforms, and whether they consider our stations important enough to seek out.

I’ve programmed enough radio stations to know the difference between somebody who happens to hear your station and somebody who makes a conscious decision to listen to it. One is an opportunity. The other is a relationship. And in this business, relationships are what ultimately sustain an audience.

Edison Research’s Infinite Dial 2026 found that 81% of Americans ages 12 and older listened to online audio during the previous month, representing approximately 233 million people. Weekly online audio listening reached 76%, or approximately 219 million Americans. Those numbers reflect a country in which digital listening has become routine rather than something consumers do occasionally when they’re away from their radios.

Podcast consumption has also reached remarkable levels. Edison reports that 58% of Americans ages 12 and older listened to or watched a podcast during the previous month, while 45% consumed one within the previous week. Podcasting has evolved from a relatively specialized form of entertainment into a mainstream part of American media consumption.

And here’s something that should command the attention of every talk-radio programmer in the country.

Edison Research reported that podcasts overtook AM/FM talk radio in share of spoken-word audio listening time among Americans ages 13 and older in 2025. Podcasts accounted for approximately 40% of that listening, compared with 39% for AM/FM talk radio.

For generations, broadcast radio was where Americans went to hear conversations, opinions, interviews, comedy, sports discussions, and compelling personalities. Now they can access much of that content whenever they choose, often without commercials, without waiting for a particular program to begin, and without being confined to whatever happens to be scheduled at that moment.

None of this means broadcast talk radio has lost its relevance. It does mean the competitive environment has changed, and the programming philosophies that worked when radio had fewer direct competitors are not necessarily enough to maintain audience loyalty today.

Listeners haven’t stopped wanting interesting conversations. They’ve simply acquired more control over when, where, and how they hear them.

One of the most important pieces of research in this conversation comes from Edison Research’s Gen Z Audio Report. The study found that Americans ages 13 to 24 spend an average of four hours and ten minutes each day consuming audio.

That’s more than four hours a day spent listening to music, conversations, entertainment, and other forms of audio programming. Clearly, young people haven’t abandoned the idea of listening, and they certainly aren’t suffering from a lack of interest in the kind of content radio has traditionally provided.

The real issue is where those hours are going.

Edison’s research found that streaming music accounted for approximately 42% of Gen Z’s daily audio time, followed by YouTube at approximately 20%. AM/FM radio accounted for about 16%.

Now, those figures and Nielsen’s monthly reach numbers are different measurements involving somewhat different age groups, so they should not be treated as directly interchangeable. But considered together, they illustrate something that ought to concern us.

A young person can encounter radio during the month without making it a particularly significant part of their listening life.

That’s the difference between having access to an audience and having influence over that audience.

And I have to wonder whether we’re spending enough time talking about that distinction.

We keep discussing how to attract younger listeners, but what are we actually doing to earn their attention? Are we developing programming that reflects their interests? Are we investing in personalities who understand their culture? Are we allowing creative people to experiment, or are we expecting the next generation to fall in love with the same programming methods that worked for their parents?

I don’t believe younger consumers have rejected radio as a technology. I think many of them simply have other options they find more interesting, more relevant, or more convenient.

That ought to challenge us rather than offend us.

There’s another number from Edison Research that I think deserves an entire programming convention devoted to discussing it.

In its Gen Z research, Edison found that social media was the leading source of music discovery among Americans ages 13 to 24, cited by approximately 30% of respondents. Friends and family accounted for 19%, while online audio recommendations and curated stations accounted for 18%.

AM/FM radio accounted for approximately 6%.

Six percent.

I’ve spent enough years sitting in music meetings, listening to unfamiliar records, talking with promotion executives, and deciding whether to take a chance on a new artist to understand how much the music-discovery business has changed.

There was a time when a good Music Director or Program Director could hear something special in a record before the rest of the country discovered it. We could introduce an artist to a market, build familiarity through airplay, and sometimes watch a song become a national hit. That wasn’t just exciting for the artist or the record company. It gave the station an identity as a place where listeners could hear something new.

Now think about how often radio waits for a song to establish itself somewhere else before deciding it’s worth playing.

Streaming numbers become significant. Social media starts generating attention. A song gains traction through short-form videos. Then broadcasters begin discussing whether the record belongs in rotation.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with using those indicators. They provide valuable information about audience behavior, and a smart programmer should absolutely pay attention to them.

But when did we become so comfortable allowing other platforms to do much of the discovery work for us?

I’m not suggesting that every station needs to abandon its research or start playing unfamiliar music simply to prove it can. That would be irresponsible programming. I am suggesting that we need to reconsider how much room we leave for creativity, instincts, and genuinely new musical experiences.

If listeners can hear every familiar song on a streaming service, what are we providing that makes them choose us instead?

And if we’re no longer introducing younger audiences to music, artists, or personalities they couldn’t easily discover elsewhere, we shouldn’t be surprised when those audiences develop their strongest relationships with other platforms.

For decades, broadcasters have enjoyed a tremendous advantage in the automobile. Radio has been easy to access, free to use, and available almost everywhere people drive. Even today, those qualities remain important.

Edison’s Infinite Dial 2026 found that approximately 73% of drivers had listened to AM/FM radio in their primary vehicle during the previous month. That’s a significant level of usage, and radio remains a major part of the American driving experience.

However, the same research found that approximately 48% of drivers had used online audio in their vehicles, while 37% had listened to podcasts. Among drivers ages 18 to 34, online audio usage was substantially higher, reaching roughly 73%.

The dashboard has changed.

Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, connected entertainment systems, and mobile devices have transformed what used to be a relatively simple listening environment into a marketplace of competing choices.

A driver can listen to a local morning show, a favorite podcast, a personally curated playlist, a satellite-radio channel, or a streaming station from halfway around the world.

And all of those choices are competing for the same ears.

Radio still has advantages, particularly when it comes to live information, local relevance, and simplicity. But we shouldn’t confuse having a prominent place in the dashboard with having an automatic claim on the listener’s attention.

The next generation of drivers is already accustomed to choosing content through connected systems. If our programming isn’t compelling enough to make those listeners select the radio option, the mere presence of an AM/FM receiver won’t solve that problem.

Our challenge is not simply protecting access to the dashboard. It’s making sure people have a reason to use that access.

Nielsen and Edison Research have reported that AM/FM radio continues to command the largest share of advertising-supported audio listening time. During the second quarter of 2025, radio accounted for approximately 64% of that listening. By the fourth quarter, its share was approximately 61%, compared with 21% for podcasts, 15% for streaming music services, and 3% for satellite radio.

That’s a strong position within the advertising-supported audio marketplace, and it should absolutely be part of radio’s story when broadcasters discuss the value of their medium with advertisers.

But we need to be careful about what those numbers represent.

Advertising-supported audio is not the same measurement as all audio consumption. Subscription streaming services and other advertising-free listening options also compete for consumer attention, even when they aren’t competing directly for advertising expenditures.

A listener spending two hours with an ad-free music subscription is still spending two hours away from broadcast radio.

That’s not an argument against promoting radio’s advertising strengths. Far from it. We should be making the strongest possible case for the enormous audiences the medium continues to deliver.

But successful advertising sales and successful long-term audience development are not identical challenges.

A broadcaster can make a compelling case to an advertiser about current audience reach while still confronting serious questions about where future listening will come from.

Both conversations need to happen.

There are things I’ve watched happen in this industry that still leave me shaking my head. We attend conferences where executives celebrate the importance of live personalities, local engagement, and authentic audience relationships. We listen to presentations about the value of companionship and the emotional connection people develop with broadcasters.

Then we go back to our stations and hear about another familiar voice being eliminated, another local position being consolidated, or another market losing the people who helped make its stations distinctive.

Now, I understand the financial realities of operating a radio business. I’ve managed departments, worked within budgets, dealt with corporate expectations, and made difficult decisions myself. I’m not going to pretend that every station can afford a full roster of local personalities or that every programming position is financially sustainable.

But there has to be a point where we recognize the difference between operating efficiently and eliminating the very qualities that make our product valuable.

I’ve worked with personalities who became part of their communities. They knew the local schools, understood the neighborhoods, showed up at events, helped families during difficult times, and built relationships that extended far beyond the songs they played.

Those people gave listeners a reason to care about the station.

And when you take them away, what exactly are you replacing them with?

Sometimes the answer is an outstanding syndicated personality who brings tremendous entertainment value. There are nationally distributed programs that perform exceptionally well and have built loyal audiences across multiple markets.

But other times, the replacement is little more than a collection of familiar songs, promotional liners, and generic content that could originate anywhere.

We cannot seriously expect younger audiences to develop deep relationships with radio while steadily removing the human connections that historically made those relationships possible.

And perhaps even more troubling, we’re not always developing the next generation of people who could fill those roles.

This is one of the questions I’d like every major broadcasting company to answer.

Where are the next generation of programmers, Music Directors, production specialists, and on-air personalities supposed to come from?

When I entered this business, there were opportunities to learn by doing. You could start on weekends, fill in for a full-time personality, work an overnight shift, spend time in production, or develop your skills under an experienced programmer who believed you had potential.

You learned how to work a microphone, understand the music, connect with listeners, and make the kind of mistakes that eventually teach you how to become a better broadcaster.

Some of the most successful personalities in radio history developed through that process.

Today, many of those entry-level opportunities have disappeared or become extremely limited.

We’re operating more stations with fewer people, expecting existing employees to handle multiple responsibilities, and increasingly looking for talent that arrives with an established audience and an immediate ability to generate results.

There’s nothing wrong with recruiting people who have developed followings through social media, podcasts, or other digital platforms. In fact, I think radio should be actively looking for opportunities to bring talented creators into the business.

But a large social media following doesn’t automatically make somebody an effective radio personality.

Broadcasting is a craft.

It requires timing, discipline, communication skills, audience awareness, and an understanding of how to create compelling content within a format.

If we want to attract younger listeners, we ought to be developing broadcasters who understand those listeners. That means investing in people, providing mentorship, and creating opportunities for talent to grow.

We can’t eliminate the development system and then complain that there aren’t enough great personalities available.

I’ve programmed stations in Tulsa, Omaha, Kansas City, Topeka, Wichita, and other markets, and I can tell you that every community has its own personality. There are similarities, certainly, but each market has its own culture, traditions, relationships, and expectations.

What works in one city doesn’t automatically work in another.

A station that understands its community can build something far more meaningful than a collection of songs.

It can celebrate local achievements, support charitable efforts, recognize hometown artists, provide reliable information during emergencies, and become part of the everyday conversation taking place among the people it serves.

That kind of relationship is difficult for a national streaming service to duplicate.

Spotify may know somebody’s musical preferences extraordinarily well. It doesn’t necessarily know that the local high school basketball team just won a championship, that a family in the community needs help after a fire, or that a neighborhood business is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary.

A good local radio station can know those things, and a great one makes them matter.

Of course, providing meaningful local programming requires investment. Somebody has to gather the information, establish relationships, create content, and show up when the community needs the station.

But isn’t that part of what broadcasters are supposed to do?

I’ve never believed that every station needs to sound the same simply because they share a format designation. A successful radio brand should reflect the community it serves, not merely the corporate programming philosophy of the company that owns it.

If we surrender that distinction, we’re giving up one of the strongest competitive advantages radio still possesses.

Pew Research Center reported in 2025 that approximately 76% of adults ages 18 to 29 get news from social media at least sometimes. Its research has also demonstrated that younger consumers frequently encounter information through digital environments they already use rather than deliberately seeking out traditional news sources.

That distinction has implications well beyond news programming.

For decades, radio largely depended on audiences coming to us. We established a frequency, developed programming, promoted our personalities, and encouraged listeners to tune in at a particular time.

Younger consumers increasingly discover content through the platforms they’re already using.

They see a clip from a podcast, watch a personality on social media, hear a song in a video, or discover an interesting conversation through a recommendation. If they enjoy what they’ve encountered, they may seek out additional content from the creator.

Radio needs to become better at participating in that process.

And I don’t mean simply posting a graphic that says the morning show starts at six.

Our personalities need to create content people actually want to watch, share, and discuss. Our stations need to develop recognizable identities across platforms without losing their broadcast strengths.

We should be using digital distribution to introduce people to our programming, not treating every platform outside the transmitter as an enemy.

A great broadcaster can be compelling on the radio, entertaining in a podcast, and engaging on social media without sacrificing the fundamental skills that make that person successful.

The challenge is creating an operation where those efforts work together.

Here’s where I would start if somebody handed me responsibility for developing a long-term audience strategy for a radio group today.

First, I’d stop assuming that reaching younger listeners means we’ve successfully converted them into regular radio users. I’d want to know how frequently they’re listening, how much time they’re spending with us, which personalities and programs they prefer, and whether that engagement is growing or declining.

Then I’d start listening to the people we’re trying to attract.

Not just through auditorium tests or online surveys, although those can be useful. I’d want younger consumers involved in actual conversations about programming, content, music discovery, and what they expect from an audio brand.

I’d recruit young creative talent from colleges, social media, podcasting, music communities, and local entertainment scenes, then provide the professional training necessary to turn promising creators into skilled broadcasters.

I’d give programmers reasonable opportunities to introduce new music and develop features that differentiate their stations from streaming playlists. That wouldn’t mean abandoning research or throwing away established formats. It would mean recognizing that a little discovery and personality can make familiar programming considerably more interesting.

I’d make local engagement a measurable priority, not simply another phrase in a corporate mission statement.

And I’d insist that every digital initiative have a clear purpose.

Are we using social media to introduce new listeners to a station? Are we building relationships with audiences who might attend our events, subscribe to our content, or become regular listeners? Are we providing a meaningful extension of our programming?

Or are we simply celebrating views and likes because they’re easy to count?

There’s a difference between generating attention and building an audience.

We need to understand that difference before we convince ourselves that digital activity automatically translates into long-term radio growth.

I’ve grown tired of hearing people insist that radio is finished, because the evidence doesn’t support that conclusion. The medium still reaches enormous audiences, remains important to advertisers, and continues to provide entertainment, information, and companionship to millions of Americans.

But I’m equally uncomfortable with the idea that strong reach statistics somehow eliminate the need for serious discussion about our future.

The challenges are real.

Younger consumers have more entertainment options than ever. Streaming commands a substantial portion of their listening time. Podcasts are increasingly important in spoken-word audio. Music discovery has moved toward digital platforms, and the automobile is no longer an environment where radio can assume it will be the default choice.

At the same time, parts of our industry have reduced investment in the very things that could help us compete: local personalities, talent development, original programming, music discovery, and meaningful community involvement.

We cannot blame all of that on outside competitors.

Some of it reflects decisions we’ve made ourselves.

And if we’re willing to acknowledge that, we can begin making different decisions.

I still remember the excitement of launching a station, hearing the first songs go on the air, watching an unfamiliar personality develop a following, and seeing a community begin to embrace something we’d worked so hard to create.

I’ve experienced the pressure of competitive ratings battles, the satisfaction of watching a station grow, and the frustration of trying to explain why a particular programming investment mattered even when its value wasn’t immediately reflected in a financial report.

I’ve seen radio change lives, raise money for people in desperate situations, bring communities together, and make listeners feel that somebody on the other end of the microphone understood exactly what they were going through.

That’s the radio I believe in.

Not because I think everything was better thirty years ago, but because those experiences demonstrated what this medium is capable of accomplishing when talented people are given the resources and freedom to create something worthwhile.

I don’t believe our future depends on convincing younger Americans to listen the way previous generations listened.

I believe it depends on understanding how they live, what matters to them, and how radio can earn a meaningful place in that world.

We need to be willing to try new things, develop new talent, embrace digital platforms, restore a sense of discovery, and remember that people connect with people.

We also need to protect what already makes radio valuable.

There’s no reason those objectives cannot coexist.

The numbers tell us that radio remains a powerful force in American media, but they also tell us that our audience’s relationship with audio is changing. We have an extraordinary foundation from which to compete, provided we’re willing to examine the business honestly and make the investments necessary to remain relevant.

What concerns me isn’t that young people have stopped listening to audio. They’re listening for hours every day, consuming music, conversations, commentary, and entertainment across an expanding collection of platforms.

What concerns me is whether we’re giving them enough reasons to choose us.

We can continue presenting impressive reach statistics at industry conferences, celebrating the strength of our advertising-supported audiences, and reminding people of radio’s history.

All of that has value.

But none of it replaces the work required to build the next generation of listeners.

Somewhere right now, there’s a teenager discovering an artist on social media, a college student following a favorite podcast personality, and a young driver connecting a phone to a dashboard before leaving the driveway.

Those people are not necessarily opposed to radio.

They’re simply choosing the content that matters most to them.

The opportunity is still there, and I believe it’s enormous. But we’re going to have to compete for it with creativity, talent, commitment, and something more compelling than the fact that we’ve been around for a hundred years.

Radio doesn’t have a shortage of people listening to audio. It has a challenge convincing enough of those people to listen to radio.

That’s a problem worth solving, and it’s one this industry should be capable of addressing.

After more than three decades in broadcasting, I haven’t lost faith in radio. I’ve seen too much of what it can accomplish to give up on it now.

But I also know that faith without action doesn’t build an audience.

We have the reach. We have the infrastructure. We have the history, and despite everything that’s changed, we still have some extraordinary talent working in this business.

Now we need to decide whether we’re willing to build something the next generation actually wants.

Because they’re already listening.

The question is whether we’re prepared to give them a reason to listen to us.

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