The title of today’s post sounds like a retro horror film. And that’s no accident. Because many of you who read this blog might feel like it’s not fiction – you’re living it.
Except there’s nothing imaginary or old timey about it. It’s happening RIGHT NOW, in many corners of the radio business. Those of you who have made radio broadcasting your career in the 21st century know the plot line all too well. First, the Twin Towers, then the Great Recession, and not that long ago, the Pandemic – all markers that put critically important time stamps on radio as an industry, and perhaps to track your career trajectory.
Maybe much of what we’re seeing playing out now, not just in radio, but in other pockets of the media business are the inevitable byproducts of consolidation, the rush to go public, and the devaluation of towers-and-transmitter radio properties. We’re trying to save AM radio while stations are being shut down because they have been unable to survive on their own, even in the midst of multi-station clusters.
But is there any accurate way of knowing how much “shrinkage” there actually has been during these post-pandemic years or even since the turn of the century/millennium? Who tracks this stuff? And how can we know with any degree of confidence whether the industry may be, in fact, holding its own when it comes to “head counts” or whether all those RIFs are contributing to a diminishing critical mass.
This line of thinking crystallized for me several days ago while reading a story in Inside Radio that attempted to answer my question:
“Here’s How Many People Were Working In Broadcasting Last Month”
And they went right to the source – the Bureau of Labor Statistics – described as the U.S. government’s “fact-finding agency that’s under the auspices of the Bureau of Labor which has existed since the 1880s.” The BLS has published their Monthly Labor Review that tracks the American workforce since 1915.
The BLS February reports showed that more than 331,000 were employed in “broadcasting” – but that combines radio with television and other audio/video producers. That’s a loss of 1,000 jobs since January, but from which sectors of the broadcasting community.
And thus, the search began. Interestingly, I found a blog post from nine years ago in Tom Benson’s “Media Confidential” titled “Radio Jobs Tumble.” The story opened with an ominous quote:
“If you work in U.S. radio broadcasting, you are part of an increasingly exclusive club.”
Citing stats in a Radio World story from back then, Benson quoted BLS numbers pointing to “substantial job shrinkage” in the radio industry going back 25 years to 1990:
You’ll be tempted to stare at the horror show that is the newspaper business. It’s the blue line and it’s like watching a multi-car pile-up on the freeway. Talk about free-falls.
But the thin red line that is radio, while nowhere near as heart-stopping is still a sobering piece of data, especially when you consider it was ten years, scores of RIFs, and a global pandemic ago.
In the story, Benson notes radio lost 27% of its jobs during the quarter century beginning in 1990. Back then, there were 188,700 radio jobs, but those numbers dropped precipitously to just 86,800 through March 2016.
Where is radio sitting nine years later in 2025? I can’t find the specific numbers, but you’re invited to conduct a search of your own.
Have you ever had a radio job where you were made to feel like a head of cattle? Maybe there’s a very good reason for this.
In what was once a very crowded field, the radio ranks are thinning – and maybe faster than you thought.
I did find this…
It’s a BLS forecast of jobs they track under the heading “Announcers and DJs.” In fact, you might find their resources of interest, especially their wide ranging report on the profession. Check it out here.
Their job projection is over a ten-year range, covering 2023-33 so it’s a good look at future employment prospects behind the mic. And the story isn’t particularly heartening:
At first glance, the overall outlook – the red bar – looks promising. The BLS tracks growth in the sector at +4% – not exactly robust, but not bad given the vagaries of the job market.
But then you work your way to the bottom bar, “Broadcast announcers and radio disc jockeys,” you confront a drop of 4% over the decade. And in light of recent RIFs, employee buybacks, retirements, and deaths, I have to wonder whether those digit heads at BLS aren’t looking at radio through a rosier lens.
The herd is thinning. You can feel it everywhere – in social media, in industry trades, and at conferences.
Our efforts to field research surveys – first, commercial radio air talent for Morning Show Boot Camp and our new “On Air Pulse” study of Christian Music Radio talent in the field right now – has encountered more turbulence in recent years. My sense is that it’s less about interest in participating and more to do with a shrinking population of jobs.
I couldn’t help notice a post last week from a friend on the radio who speculated whether the on-air job people are holding at this moment will be the last radio gig they’ll get. Fatalistic or realistic?
We’ve started asking our talent respondents in our AQ studies to project the chances they’ll finish their careers in radio. While seven in ten believe they’ll cross the “radio finish line,” that’s nine points lower than this question yielded one year earlier.
And generationally, only about half of Millennials on the airwaves now believe they’ll be around to receive their radio gold watches when it’s time to hang up those headphones and call it a career.
These are challenging times for talent – along with all of us who are still slugging it out at the radio rodeo. No matter how this whole saga ends up, it’s on us who are still “at it” to do the best jobs we can, whether we’re in management, selling time, or behind the mic.
And hopefully, DOGE and its job-cutting chainsaws won’t be coming after the Bureau of Labor Statistics in its quest to root out waste in government spending and eliminate jobs that produce little in the way of meaningful results. President Trump has been vocally critical of the BLS’ numbers when he doesn’t like them or feel they don’t fit his narrative.
Like ’em or not, the numbers are the numbers.
And now more than ever, we need reliable data from our government.
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In 2008, jacapps was launched - a mobile apps company that has designed and built more than 1,300 apps for both the Apple and Android platforms. In 2013, the DASH Conference was created - a mashup of radio and automotive, designed to foster better understanding of the "connected car" and its impact.
Along with providing the creative and intellectual direction for the company, Fred consults many of Jacobs Media's commercial and public radio clients, in addition to media brands looking to thrive in the rapidly changing tech environment.
Fred was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2018.
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I think that radio’s fundamental problem is that management, and above, no longer understand the business they are in. Or how all the pieces fit.
They may understand income vs expenses, and maybe profit, but they seem to be showing a lack of understanding of their actual ‘product.’ And it’s the product that is what matters to the listener. Remember, it’s the listener that you are selling to the advertiser.
I truly think that radio can shine again, but it may require the inmates (jocks) taking over the asylum.
Bingo, Paul. Too many people forget that we are NOT in the entertainment business, we are in the advertising business.
I have always said that my job as a programmer is to create an on-air experience that attracts — and holds — as many listeners for as many times a day as they listen and for as long each listening period as possible. You do that and any advertiser will see results … it is inevitable when you have a decent size audience.
I think our real problem is one we can’t go back and fix. We didn’t react when the alternative platforms started taking hold. We thought Sirius and XM were going to be expensive passing fads, We didn’t think large numbers of listeners would embrace the online services like Spotify where they could be programmers themselves with their own curated playlists.
Most importantly, we failed to understand that when we do crack the mike open, what we say has to be relevant and concise. We still have too many “personalities” who talk for five minutes per break and still say nothing.
We can recover some of the audience, but I doubt that the era of the super talent will return, outside of morning drive (and how many stations turn to a national syndicated show for that daypart these days?). Our strength as an entertainment source — so that we attract the product we sell the advertisers — is that there’s no “setup” required … not even an app (my apologies to our host for having to say that). And here’s the part we’re not quite getting right: Repackaging content into podcast-like “mini-shows” on our own station websites isn’t going to attract the missing listeners. They know where to go for real podcasts, and we aren’t it.
Bottom line: I think those Millennials are pretty good at seeing their future, job-wise. We Boomers are at the point where when we aren’t “needed” any more, we’re probably likely to say the business “isn’t what it used to be anyway”. And we’ll be right.
I can only speak for the 21st century on-air jocks: You need to take a multi-prong approach to your careers.
Make radio one aspect for certain, but concentrate also on writing (articles, jokes for local comics, short stories, a book even!), commercial video (regional advertising, features for local news stations etc), education (broadcast workshops, adult ed voiceover classes), and live stage (standup, regional theater, get in a band).
Get good and start speaking at state broadcast association conferences, and the NAB show way down the road. Get socially aware and tie in with the largest non-profit in your region; it will enrich your soul and help you network should the radio thing actually fall out from under you. Observe Elvis Duran and Ryan Seacrest as your role models.
It means a lot of hustle, but its your career — decide how important all of this is to you.
30 years ago, relocation was still common in Radio. People would move to a new town for a Radio gig. That’s almost impossible now and not even necessary. Radio must share the blame for their current dire condition. For years they pummeled listeners with 9 minute commercial breaks, stale playlists, and jocks who blathered on about themselves. The money flowed in anyway. Now, the competition is not “other” stations, but it is everywhere. Management never figured out how to pivot or simply didn’t care to try. Generic content won’t fix the Death Spiral.