Six months in, 2025 has been anything but predictable. From shock regulatory shifts and navigating agency declines to the accelerated integration of AI and unexpected alliances, radio is navigating a year full of curveballs – and the pitches keep coming.
Here at the halfway mark, Radio Ink spoke with five top leaders from across the industry to share their perspectives on the most significant developments so far, how their priorities have evolved, and what they’re focused on as the second half of the year unfolds.
What’s Been the Most Unexpected or Important Development in Radio So Far in 2025?
Beasley Media Group CEO Caroline Beasley:
“On the positive side, we are very pleased with the increased demand in streaming audio and the positive research on the utilization of Quu with Ad Syncs and Content Partnerships. As an industry, including these offerings with OTA enables our brands to reach a larger, more encompassing audience.
We have all seen significant declines in agency business this year; these digital products will help offset these declines, in addition to other digital offerings and events.”
McVay Media President Mike McVay:
“For Radio – Greater acceptance of Artificial Intelligence in content creation and around administrative needs. Not replacing people, but enabling anyone to create graphics, manufacture audio elements, improve the appearance of social media platforms, and in marketing.
For Our Business – Content creators from Digital Platforms utilizing our services to provide intelligence, guidance, and history on intersecting with broadcasting.”
RAB CEO Mike Hulvey:
“The collaborative spirit that has taken shape over the last year and a half across the industry, and as a direct result, has led to significant achievements such as the Nielsen 3-minute qualifier modernization effort this past spring. RAB has been proud to participate and support these efforts, as well as lead our advocacy efforts with the launch of the ‘One Voice for Radio‘ initiative and the companion ‘THIS! Is Radio’ initiative touting radio’s position as the audio leader.”
Media Services Group Managing Director Bob Heymann:
“The most significant and potentially industry-altering development has been the strategic alliance between Audacy and iHeart. On the surface, it’s positioned as a content and distribution partnership — but to me, it feels like the opening move in a longer game. With both companies under pressure to reduce costs and compete in an increasingly digital audio world, this alliance could very well be a trial balloon for deeper integration — maybe even a merger down the line!
If that happens, it would be the biggest consolidation play in the modern history of U.S. radio — one that forces the FCC, advertisers, and competitors to rethink what dominance and scale mean in today’s fragmented media economy. Whether it materializes or not, the fact that these two longtime rivals are finding common cause is a signal that traditional competitive lines are blurring in the face of bigger strategic threats.”
Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth Partner Frank Montero:
“I think for radio, it would have to be the naming of Brendan Carr as FCC Chairman and the sudden and unexpected resignation of Commissioner Simington. We came into 2025 knowing who the next US President would be, but until January, we did not have a new Republican chair. At the same time, the loss of Commissioner Simington hurt because he was a friend to and very supportive of broadcasters.
Combined with the loss of Michael O’Rielly in President Trump’s first term, that makes the sudden loss of two very broadcaster-friendly FCC commissioners. The Chairman’s relationship with the broadcast industry is much more complicated. Still, his rapid instruction of the ‘Delete, Delete, Delete’ proceeding could end up changing the industry in profound ways.”
How Have Your Priorities Shifted Since January?
McVay Media President Mike McVay:
“Supplementation for services that are no longer easily performed internally within radio groups and individual clusters. Providing fractional leadership and advice/guidance for critical services that have been eliminated or downgraded because of financial pressure within the industry. Executing strategies and the implementation of what heretofore was important to be based on-site. The technology exists today for many operational needs to be cloud-based.”
RAB CEO Mike Hulvey:
“We have sharpened our priorities. For instance, the demand for enhanced data and measurement is a resounding one from both the buy side as well as broadcasters, and that is a key focus of RAB’s Executive Committee and staff. Additionally, we’ve been hard at work on developing and producing resources addressing radio’s perceptions, or more aptly, we should say misperceptions.
The new series of powerful tools will be released later this month, designed in collaboration with the RAB Advocacy Committee. The new series of powerful tools will be released later this month, designed in collaboration with the RAB Advocacy Committee and will be made available to broadcasters.”
Media Services Group Managing Director Bob Heymann:
“Well, my priority has definitely shifted to improving my golf game — but unfortunately, that hasn’t gone as planned either!
Jokes aside, with so much uncertainty in radio – from the FCC’s pending decisions to questions about industry consolidation – much of the first half of the year has felt like ‘wait and see’ mode. Clients are exploring strategic moves, but many are holding off until they have more clarity. My role has shifted to scenario planning: helping broadcasters prepare for several possible outcomes, rather than betting on one direction too early.”
Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth Partner Frank Montero:
“Picking one issue out of many, I’ve been telling clients, and especially radio clients, to expect delays at the FCC. Things were already slow, but with the loss of so many staffers in the Media Bureau, the processing of applications, and especially assignment and transfer applications, is slower still. So leave room in your transactional timeline for such delays.”
If you could change one narrative about radio going into the back half of 2025, what would it be – and how do we collectively change it?
Beasley Media Group CEO Caroline Beasley:
“Our brands reach a massive audience, including OTA, online, and visual displays. We are able to offer cross-channel marketing solutions to our clients, addressing the needs of our customers. We must continue to get this message out.
Our primary competition is Big Tech, so as an industry, we must continue to message the attributes of our brands and products to both our audience and customers. One thing that will be helpful towards competing with Big Tech is to eliminate outdated regulations, particularly the antiquated ownership rules we are under today.”
What Is the #1 Issue You Have Your Eye on for the Second Half of the Year?
Beasley Media Group CEO Caroline Beasley:
“One of the biggest issues we are facing during the second half of the year is the continued decline in traditional agency business and the negative comps from political. How do we offset these declines? We are very focused on addressing this with a sharp eye on streaming audio, Quu, and other digital products.
In addition, I truly feel that we should make the buying cycle easier and less cumbersome for our clients. As an industry, we should be working together to develop a direct sell platform for our customers to use, just like other digital platforms/products.
Finally, we should be utilizing AI to help streamline our processes and become more efficient.”
McVay Media President Mike McVay:
“The economy. We appear to be in an advertising recession, possibly based on the fear of a recession or the unknown impact of tariffs on advertisers’ revenue streams. We should know more about where we are by the start of Q4. There will be smart advertisers who will see this time as an opportunity to market when their competitors are not. Being watchful of those entities is important, as we will then be prepared to be opportunistic.”
RAB CEO Mike Hulvey:
“We are focused on our membership and ensuring RAB is poised to meet their needs, especially as the business is rapidly evolving. We want and need to be in lock step with where broadcasters are and understanding what they need to help them grow, while at the same time doing the same with our advertising clients and understanding what they need in order to grow their businesses.”
Media Services Group Managing Director Bob Heymann:
“All eyes are on the FCC. Whether or not they move forward on revising ownership limits could reshape the local radio landscape. If those rules change, it could create a flurry of activity: clusters realigning, smaller players looking to exit, and buyers rethinking what scale looks like in 2025 and beyond. The uncertainty has slowed some deals – but if resolution comes, it could unlock suppressed value across the board.”
Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth Partner Frank Montero:
“If I had to pick one, it would have to be multiple ownership, and for radio specifically, the lifting of market caps and subcaps. The radio industry has been waiting for this since Ajit Pai was FCC Chairman. No matter how it plays out, I think we are bound to see some relaxation and that will lead to a spike in radio transactions and radio market consolidation.”
Caroline,
I just spotted something else you just suggested.
I respect your unmacthed contributions to in the industry, but did you really just say,
“Our primary competition is Big Tech, so as an industry, we must continue to message the attributes of our brands and products to both our audience and customers. One thing that will be helpful towards competing with Big Tech is to eliminate outdated regulations, particularly the antiquated ownership rules we are under today.”
Do you honestly think if a single company was allowed to own even MORE radio stations today, that would somehow give them the missing strategic advantage they need to compete more effectively with pay per click advertising (Big Tech)?
Let’s total up ALL of the net income (profit) generated since the year 2020 in some radio groups of increasingly larger size to test your theory that owning more radio stations provides a tactical advantage to compete against “Big Tech.”
Since 2020, here’s how much (net income) aka “profit” these groups have made:
Beasley Media Group operates 55 stations and since the year 2020 has made ZERO profit and LOST over $130 million
Audacy Inc. operates 220 stations and recently declared bankruptcy, had their stock delisted from the NYSE and had their CEO step down. It’s safe to say none of this happened because of a massive amount of profit being generated since 2020…
Cumulus Media operates 400 stations and since the year 2020 has made ZERO profit and LOST over $400 million
iHeartMedia operates 870 stations and since the year 2020 has made ZERO profit and LOST over $4 BILLION !!!!!!!!!!!!
Maybe I’m looking at the wrong end of the telescope, but a quick glance at marketwatch.com for the ticker symbols BBGI, CMLS and IHRT and what’s displayed for their respective net incomes (aka, “profit”) would suggest that the larger a radio group becomes, the less profitable it becomes—by a LOT. Bigger does not appear to mean more profitable and better able to compete with Big Tech.
Am I missing something? Please set me straight if I am, because I’m a “C” student here.
Please, ANYONE set me straight if I’ve somehow mishandled the facts here. Bob? Mary? Kelli? David? Caroline? Please correct me if I’m wrong because I’m trying to make some sense of this. Maybe I misunderstood something, but the trend since 2020 in these 4 radio groups suggests that the LARGER a radio group becomes, the more money it LOSES.
Here’s my take:
The industry doesn’t need to loosen up ownership rules to compete against the HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS that is passing it by right now to buy pay per click advertising…
It needs:
• Better leadership from the top down at every radio group in the industry starting with the largest groups
• A more intelligent, realistic, strategic, effective and tactically sound business plan
• A commitment to build cultures of excellence inside each station so that the departments function and cooperate effectively as a team on the same page aiming for the same mission: PROFIT
• TRAINING for GM’s to be effective managers of every single department inside the station
• TRAINING for sales managers so they can actually lead by example and inspire their teams by being in the field with them daily SHOWING them how to close deals
• TRANING for sales people that comes from sales managers that are by their side every step of the way in the process of engaging prospects and clients to build long term partnership relationships that deliver ever increasing streams of revenue
• Expert help from the best and brightest programming minds in the business to capture and hold an audience in today’s ever changing media landscape—which needs to include rethinking the spot load effective immediately. For the record, Fewer units per hour is a MUST today. Wake up! It’s not 1990 any more ! Listeners have commercial free, or nearly commercial free choices today!
• TRAINING for every single employee that walks into the station each day so they know EXACTLY what’s expected of them and how to be the BEST at their job because they have clear, concise lists of BEST PRACTICES to learn and become proficient in
• An effective sales process that explains the value statement of the stations and platforms clearly and concisely in a digital format with pictures and graphs, an effective way to hold a conversation with a prospect or client, effective inventory management to include intelligent pricing and more proactive schedule moving in the busy months, effective training to understand the assumed strength but considerable weaknesses of pay per click advertising so it can be discussed intelligently at the local level and a general mindset to deliver the best customer experience on the planet to every customer without exception by being the best trained, most professional, most prepared, most respected, most listened to, most trusted media experts on earth
• A commitment to continuous improvement in every department with everyone’s suggestions being taken seriously and given fair, thorough due diligence without the threat that they’ll be negatively impacted if their suggestions expose someone’s incompetence
• Clear, properly managed key performance indicators that weed out bad managers and reward good managers
THAT’s how to “offset” Big Tech’s impact and start clawing back market share from them and no one appears to be providing all of these things right now. Instead, sellers and managers are wondering the streets right now with no earthly idea what a click farm is, how data is sold and resold, how many clicks it takes to generate an actual sale, how much profit is left after those clicks are paid for and how to change the conversation back to profit from units sold, instead of website traffic spikes. Is anyone having THOSE kinds of detailed conversations today? (Crickets…)
“Big Tech” trained their sellers and managers and changed the conversation to focus on website traffic being the sole key performance indicator of success and radio let it happen because radio doesn’t train its managers and sellers to understand how to have these technical media conversations. Big Tech changed the meaning of sucess and it worked. BIG TIME.
Radio people are still out there telling advertisers they’re “sold out” as if that will somehow generate more sales. The impact of radio’s inadequate training and unprepared management is hard to calculate. For example, using the RAB’s considerable resources is still considered optional instead of essential and mandatory to educate your staff.
As a result, there is a growing media knowledge gap between radio sellers and radio managers and BIG TECH that has given BIG TECH an enormous tactical advantage on the battlefield for ad dollars today. Radio groups have done nothing to effectively to address this.
Radio sales people aren’t just being taken less seriously today, they’re being completely wiped off the battlefield by such superior training and management by BIG TECH, that it’s not even a contest. Is that their fault? Are they really being put on the battlefield with everything they need and the complete support from every level of management behind them, or are they being sent out there unarmed? I think the scoreboard would suggest they’re losing by a few hundred billion points right about now.
Is that their fault?
Radio has a 100 year track record of success and comes to the table today with 15 different insanely powerful platforms to engage customers to buy products…and the largest players in the industry can’t seem to make a single dime of profit with these insanely powerful assets…and you’re suggesting we should let them own even more radio assets?
Is that logical?
Please see the movie F1. It’s about what happens when you listen to someone with a track record of success suggest, then implement the necessary changes to win, instead of letting your business continue to go down the drain.
Hey, struggling CEO’s out there… do you really want to keep losing money and having worthless stock options and having your radio platforms be taken LESS seriously in the years ahead…or do you want to start winning in the third quarter of 2025 and never stop winning for the next century and beyond? I think you have the entire industy’s support behind you for the latter, so let her rip! Go make it happen! Everyone wants you to knock it out of the park!
And if I have somehow misunderstood ANYTHING… please set me straight. Please show me the massive profit you’ve made since 2020 that has somehow escaped showing up in your published earnings reports and I will admit my egregious error in reading these reports incorrectly. I’m admittedly not very bright, so maybe I’m not seeing this accurately.
So far, your expenses appear to have exceeded your revenue by A LOT in the last 5 years. You aren’t taking in enough money to cover the money you’re spending. I know what happens when I do that with my own money, so I never actually do that.
Can we agree that losing money is a problem and it’s not sustainable for your companies, not a pathway to success? Successful companies MAKE money. Your companies have been LOSING money. Are we on the same page that’s not good?
Spotify MADE over a BILLION DOLLARS in 2024 while lots of US radio companies LOST money in 2024. Am I wrong??
Conclusion:
Radio CEO’s, we need you to be your best moving forward. We’re counting on you to up your games, so how about working together with some more effective collaboration with your staffs moving forward and letting the BEST ideas become policy regardless of where they came from. Maybe some of the folks working for you right this minute have the solutions you need and feel like they’d be fired for suggesting them. Address that fear. As in, today. Admit that you need some advice—from your staff, from some outside consultants, from other successful leaders in other industries…then get that advice and use it. We really, really, really want you to succeed. If you succeed, everyone suceeds.
As sure as I’m standing here, there is a road to massive levels of success out there. You just have to find it, or pave your own road, but it’s out there and you already have the assets and people in place to make it happen.
Or, you can just keep doing what you’re doing and let advertisers keep thinking that a postage stamp size display ad on a cell phone is worth $350 BILLION more than ANY of your platforms that can FULLY engage a customer and tell a compelling story about their business.
We all know that makes no sense, so let’s go on offense with 15 platforms times ALL of your stations times all of your people and go put some hard hitting facts and ideas on the table that will make advertisers sit up and take notice. They want to make more money and you just need to wake them up out of their delusion that pay per click is really helping them reach their goals. When you do the math, it’s not delivering what they think it is. SO DO THE MATH WITH THEM ! !!!
Net profit = gross profit minus how much you paid for all those “clicks”
So, what’s the answer? Did they make a single DIME? It will shock you to see how many didn’t !!! THAT’S THE STORY, FOLKS. SO, TELL IT.
Let’s start putting some points on the board for radio, some actual radio profit, starting in Q3 2025 and then start running the score up!
Caroline, Caroline, Caroline…
While you enjoy the sincere admiration of many in the industry, may I respectfully zero in on what you just said:
“One of the biggest issues we are facing during the second half of the year is the continued decline in traditional agency business and the negative comps from political. How do we offset these declines?”
You’re speaking about agency business declines as if it’s some kind of external event that’s out of your control.
It’s not. Your sales staff controls their own destiny with agency business and if they’re falling behind, losing deals, taking smaller shares, something is off. There’s a loose bolt somewhere, maybe a few loose bolts, that need tightening.
If your revenue from agencies is declining, it’s a direct reflection on the effectiveness of your sales managers and sellers, your sales process and the tools and techniques that they’re using. Businesses and brands have been constantly changing their media spending habits up and down for the last 100 years. Markets are ALWAYS changing, and political spending has always been factored in and out of every quarter for the last 100 years.
This is not some brand new, unique event that’s causing your revenue or anyone else’s revenue to sputter. That’s not the root problem. Understanding what drives revenue is critical—and always has been.
Far too many people in the business today have no earthly idea what truly drives revenue growth consistently, then they become a sales manager or a GM and infect their staffs with a lot of terrible ideas that lead to erratic growth and inevitable swift declines in revenue. That’s common and it’s what failure looks like.
Successful sales teams build long-term partnerships with agencies and direct clients that foster consistent, continuous revenue growth no matter what happens in the overall market. The only way to “offset” revenue declines is to use an effective sales process, train your people to use it, support them at every stage and to make sure every department inside the station is committed to and supportive of the mission: Revenue growth.
In order to do this, you have to understand what a successful sales process looks like, what effective training looks like and what salespeople today need to engage clients and prospects in a conversation that generates an actual sale.
You need some help, Caroline—and so do plenty of other CEO’s in the radio business today. I get that it’s not easy running a radio group, but if listening to the people you hired to sell your platforms tell you that “agency spending is down” as if that somehow insulates them from their responsibility to sell your amazing collection of radio gems, it’s just plain wrong. It’s their job to find a way and if they’re failing, they’re just not looking hard enough to find that way, because there’s aways a way to grow revenue IF you know how.
You’ve been handed 55 of the most pristine, respected radio stations in the industry, but managed to lose money every year for the last 5 years. You have literally not made a single dollar of net income (profit) and instead have lost well over $130 million—according to your public records published on marketwatch.com. under the ticker symbol BBGI. For the record, you’re losing considerably LESS money than some other CEO’s are losing out there today, but NONE of you should be losing a single dime. You should all be making money hand over fist right now for your companies, sending your share prices through the roof and paying down debt to ZERO. You control the most powerful marketing weapons on the planet with a 100 year track record of success. If that’s not a license to print money, I’m not sure what would be.
If I lost that much money with those kinds of assets under my control, I’d be open to some new ideas right about now. But, what do I know?
Go see the movie “F1.”
It’s about what happened when the owner of a financially struggling racing team started to listen to some new ideas about how to succeed from somebody who knew what they were talking about…and what happened after that.
(No spoilers…you just need to see this movie…)
Just don’t keep doing what you’ve been doing for the last 5 years and expect to change the course of your company’s financial future. Don’t accept failure and excuses. Collaborate. Listen. Lead. Insist. Suggest. Observe. Debate. Empower. Support. Equip. Train. Reward. Unite. Learn.
Win.
If I can grow revenue for 19 years straight, a fifth grader can grow revenue for 19 years straight. I’m arguably dumber than a bag of hammers—and still managed to grow revenue on stations all over the US for 76 consecutive quarters in a row, in some of the most barbaric conditions imaginable, without a single miss.
It’s possible, so there are literally no excuse to not grow revenue today. None. You’re either growing revenue robustly, or you’re failing. It’s that cut and dried.
ANYONE can grow revenue with the right plan and support, so don’t accept excuses. You’re better that that, Caroline.
Now, go dazzle us with a phenomenal second half of 2025. The industry could use a WIN right about now…but we’ll settle for a base hit.
That’s how ralley’s start…
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