Yesterday’s blog post’s focus was on the NAB convention happening this week in Las Vegas. Given the instability of the financial markets, the timing couldn’t be more challenging for the thousands gathering in Sin City to discuss how broadcasters are playing their cards.
Over the years, this has been a focus of this blog and much of the work we’ve done at Jacobs Media. How radio can embrace digital while retaining its essence has been a significant part of our efforts. So, how is the broadcast radio industry holding up? Is it competitive with the expanding media choices? And how can it continue to achieve long-term growth, while making its Q2 numbers?
Like it or not, the digital wave has slowly but surely become the dominant way even aging audiences are consuming the content broadcasters are making. Our sample in Techsurvey 2025 leans old—the average is about 58 years-old for our entire survey of core radio listeners. And still, using digital devices of various kinds—mobile phones and tablets, smart speakers, smart TVs, and other gadgetry—continue to grow, while listening on “regular radios” continue down the flattish path.
This longitudinal look on the chart below at how our Techsurvey respondents access their favorite radio station’s content continues to show a changing of the guard between what we refer to as “traditional” versus “digital.” While there is still a 20 percentage point gap between the two in our new study, you can clearly see where the respective “pucks” are moving (with respect to Wayne Gretzky). Back in 2013, the space between the two was more like an abyss as more than 70 percentage points separated the two.
Meanwhile, here in 2025, the gap has shrunk to a mere 20%. It’s a whole new reality, but only for the broadcasters who embrace it.
So, what’s your company’s digital strategy—and is this a major topic for you if you’re attending the NAB this week? Yes, everyone is engaged in digital at this point. You have a website and maybe you bought a mobile app. But what is your actual level of commitment to digital and how does it fit into your master plan? Are you embracing digital or just checking the boxes? And to what extent has it become a revenue difference maker for your brand?
These are some of the questions you’d hope radio’s leadership would be discussing in Vegas this week with their company’s rank-and-file. And hopefully, you’re making time to attend panels and keynotes at the NAB if you’re in attendance this year.
I’d like to be a fly on the wall at the Wynn bar, overhearing the conversations taking place among the industry’s movers and shakers.
Broadcast radio’s shortfall in digital has more to do with its current priorities, often more representative by where the industry was back in the 1980s rather than in the here and now. Too many companies are playing “small ball”—still looking at radio as that quaint medium from the past, up against TV, newspapers, and outdoors. A competitive battle was typically fought between a couple of stations. It was a simple time when adhering to the fundamentals and hiring wisely could put your station in a comfortable situation in a local market.
But today, most broadcast radio stations are duking it out for their relevancy. They may not even realize their narrow point of view of their own medium may be holding them back. Radio has natural “sweet spots.” I believe our forerunners figured that out during the media tsunami called television exploded on the scene during the early 1950s. In many ways, television was the internet of that period—bigger than radio, national, and visual. Just as the internet and new media outlets have done, television quickly stole radio’s personalities, and developed many more stars on its own.
While it would be a couple of decades before cable provided massive channel and content variety, TV was the hot new medium that forced radio to introspectively assess its assets and deficits 75 or so years ago. As a result format radio, hometown personalities, and local community service became the solutions to those radio innovators forced to pivot back in the ’50s and ’60s. Those conditions are repeating themselves today, but radio broadcasters have been slower to grasp the new realities and respond accordingly. More often than not, many radio broadcasters today continue to see their main competitors as the other country station down the dial or a syndicated morning show on that AM talker.
In reality, radio’s lunch is more likely being eaten by smart players in the podcasting world, commercial-free channels on SiriusXM, or playlists on Spotify. Yet, radio broadcasters continue to play “small ball.” That’s because it’s easier and more comfortable to debate who’s benefitting from Nielsen’s “three-minute rule” or deciding on “the song of the summer” than it is to do the harder work by facing the true existential challenges facing radio. That process requires research, strategizing, and innovating—much harder requirements and tasks.
One of the rules of “small ball” is that we can measure progress in “baby steps,” the metric that so many in our industry embrace because it’s easy. The tougher putt is to focus on how broadcast radio can positively differentiate itself from the litany of digital competitors.
Reverting to radio’s true strengths is showing results for local radio—specifically medium and small markets that have focused on building connections between audience, advertisers, and communities. In many ways, they’re the canaries in the coalmine, proving that a local emphasis is valid and strategically smart.
Photo: NAB
Yesterday’s Radio Ink highlighted the goings-on at the NAB’s Saturday sessions called “The Small and Medium Market Radio Forum.” Addressing the broadcasters in attendance, NAB CEO Curtis LeGeyt stated the winning formula everyone in the room knew to be true:
“If you’re here, it’s because you have already defied the odds,” he said. “You have doubled down on your local communities. You have an owned, trusted, fact-based programming community service. You are putting bodies on the ground to be committed to the communities that you serve.”
On the sales side, of course, national business is a now a shadow of its former self. It is Main Street companies and services that now make up the foundation of radio’s revenue base. All this time, local broadcasters have been working the streets, networking with hometown businesses and getting results. It is why these broadcasters are now the canaries in the radio coalmine.
Another fundamental that broadcasters have all but ignored is the “24/7” nature of the medium. Radio is always “on”—until it’s not. Try to find live and local programming at night, in the wee hours, or over the weekend on most stations.
Instead, it has become acceptable in the name of cost savings to reduce radio down to a “13/5” medium, only focusing on Monday-Friday, 6am-7pm, better known as “prime.”
That theory was debunked last week in the Quu webinar, also covered here in a blog post titled, “Can Radio Win The Last Touch/First Touch Challenge?” In the new cars and trucks of today, the last source a driver hears is the first thing she’ll hear when she next starts the vehicle. The need to win that “last touch” becomes an imperative, but a much heavier lift when stations are jockless during so many hours and songs and production are robotically scheduled.
And how much money has radio saved with its “13/5” solution? Considering it has decimated its farm team—the hours when new talent could prove themselves—has led to the new talent shortages radio has been suffering from for decades. I have heard broadcasters lament the absence of superstars like Stern or Rush. But when you blow up the minor leagues, the pipeline to the future gets choked off.
One of the most powerful charts from our AQ studies of air talent is below, contrasting the dayparts where the jobs are today (on the left) with the shifts these same broadcasters initially occupied when they were newbies (on the right). Today, nights/overnights/weekends/part-time make up only 14% of today’s dayparts, compared to when these same broadcasters were sharpening their skills and learning the ropes during more obscure hours when mistakes aren’t very costly. In those days, three-fourths of these up-and-comers worked on the air on shifts that essentially no longer exist today.
And then there’s the “live” part, an attribute of radio that for all intents and purposes, that cannot be duplicated by podcasts, DSPs, and most television.
But radio’s ability to be live and in the moment is part of what makes it an engaging, expansive medium. Once again, when spreadsheet strategies rule, it is easy to walk away from another big advantage in the name of the bottom line.
It’s even in the way radio uses ratings to market itself, almost always playing “small ball” by choosing the tiniest number on the page.
We don’t sell by trumpeting those mega cume numbers, the thousands, tens of thousands, and even millions who tune in each week. Instead, radio is content to showcase decimal points, bragging up this week’s .5 rating versus last book’s .4.
And even when cumes are utilized, it is rarely the largest 6+, illustrating how radio reaches mass audiences of all generations. Instead, sellers narrow the scope to that all-too-familiar 25-54 box where the numbers are smaller and less impressive.
Think about the coverage you saw the last couple of days for those #HandsOff rallies that took place on Saturday. The scenes that move you and capture your attention are the long and wide shots of the throngs of protestors, not the scenes where we see a half dozen sign-carrying folks outside a state capitol dome.
President Trump understands this phenomenon better than anyone, firmly believing (crowd) size matters.
Radio continues to settle for less. and wonders why it almost always gets the short end of the media stick.
One of the best things about going to a conference like the NAB transcends the sessions and keynotes. It’s the ability to connect with old friends and meet new ones.
If you’re in Las Vegas this week, strike up a conversation, challenge conventional wisdom. And above all else….
…think BIG.
For more insights, join us for the all-industry webinar featuring the key findings from Techsurvey 2025, It’s Tuesday, April 15 at 2pm ET. Register here.
Originally published by Jacobs Media
