Bob Papper, who is a Professor Emeritus at Hofstra University, has released his seventh annual survey of newsrooms across the United States. Papper reports that salaries in radio newsrooms were up 3.1% from last year – after dropping 4.1% a year ago and barely moving the year before that.
The results of the survey are posted to the RTNDA website where Papper says this was the best year for radio salaries in a number of years.
In this next chart, Papper shows the salary by market size. He says what makes a big difference in pay is commercial vs. non-commercial. “Salaries for non-commercial stations were 25.7% higher, overall, than at commercial stations. Every position was higher except sports anchor and sports reporter. I didn’t do a regression analysis to see if market size might play a factor in the discrepancy, but it’s clear that it’s certainly not the major issue. Comparing by market size, median non-commercial salaries are actually closest to the largest, metro markets than to any other grouping.”
