The good news for radio, as Jacobs Media shares more findings from its 21st annual Techsurvey of nearly 25,000 core commercial radio listeners in the U.S., is that on-air personalities continue to outscore music as a main reason for listening. This has been the case since 2019, a year before the pandemic.
At the same time, a growing share of those saying they have listened less to AM/FM radio in the past year point to personalities or shows no longer on their local radio stations as a reason why.
While the importance of radio personalities is mainly unchanged from Jacobs’ 2024 Techsurvey, the gap between hosts and music has widened vs. 2023 or 2024. The findings tell “a compelling story that reinforces the value of proprietary hosts and shows versus music,” President and Founder Fred Jacobs writes in Jacobs Media’s blog. “Just about anybody can afford to have millions of songs available on their mobile device. Great, timely, funny, moving personalities aren’t nearly as available or common.”
Ironically, Jacobs says, “Many radio companies and stations seemingly struggle with this consistently strong audience desire for entertaining personalities. Even as the industry has morphed and been disrupted by new technology, especially in recent years, a solid personality presence has been a consistent piece that tends to stabilize successful performance for stations, not just with the audience but also in the advertising community.”
It’s when that piece becomes less consistent that listeners take notice. According to Techsurvey 2025, 27% of respondents listening less to AM/FM radio give the reason, “A personality or show I enjoyed listening to is no longer on local radio,” up significantly from 22% a year ago, and higher among men, millennials, and listeners of spoken-word formats.
What’s driving this, Jacobs writes, is “those budget cuts in radio, especially in recent years, [that] often revolve around paring talent in spite of their overt and obvious appeal. While many of the RIFs that have taken place involve a wide range of job titles, the departures we hear about most — not surprisingly — are talent cuts.”
As a result, Jacobs says, “The audience is figuring out what radio is up to. [They’re] noticing something’s amiss at many stations. And it is an ‘explainer’ as to why a growing number of the disaffected are none too happy about the state of commercial radio these days.”
It may not be surprising, then, that Jacobs’ annual AQ survey of on-air talent has for the past three years shown that 83%-85% of them agree that “overall, talent in radio is taken for granted.” “It is hard to look at [these numbers] and not ponder whether it has to be this way,” Jacobs says.
While Jacobs notes that there may be greater issues with air talent at public radio, where a commitment to news has become more important than developing talent, and at Christian radio where personalities’ importance is nearer the bottom than the top, the overall takeaway is that talent drives listening across the board.
“The power of personality spans analog and digital, movies and television, radio and streaming,” Jacobs writes. “Radio broadcasters might re-evaluate and reassess their prioritization of who stays and who goes the next time a RIF appears to be the next necessary belt-tightening tactic. Let’s not learn the hard way that radio cannot live by music alone.”
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