The next generation doesn’t hate radio. They just don’t see the point.
I’ve spent three decades in radio. Recently, I was schooled by a 23-year-old barista I’ll call “Taylor.” She represents exactly who radio wants but can’t seem to reach: young, creative, and completely uninterested in AM/FM.
I asked her one question: “What would it take for you to listen to live radio?”
Her answer wasn’t cruel. It was honest.
“Why would I? I can’t skip anything I don’t like.”
That one sentence said it all. Taylor grew up with algorithmic precision. Spotify knows her moods. YouTube lets her speed up, slow down, and comment in real time. Podcasts are curated for her. Compared to that, radio feels like a clunky time machine.
“Radio’s like a date where the other person orders for you,” she added. She’s not wrong.
Radio executives still tout “real people behind the mic.” To Taylor, that means long commercial breaks, predictable segments, and hosts who sound like salespeople instead of companions. “No one talks to me,” she said. “They talk AT ME.”
And yet she wasn’t cynical. She was curious. She still believes in audio, just not radio.
What did she want? “Texture. Be weird. Be real. Say something risky.”
She didn’t mean shock jocks or stunts. She meant audio with a pulse: opinions, imperfection, local chaos. A personality ranting about burritos. A livestreamed pet adoption. Commentary on her neighborhood HOA drama. Real-time traffic for her actual street. She dismissed syndicated shows entirely. What caught her ear was anything raw, local, and human.
She wanted now, not nostalgia.
When I offered the defense, “Radio connects communities. It’s free. It’s live.”
Her rebuttal?
“So is TikTok. But it doesn’t waste my time.”
That’s when it hit me. Radio isn’t competing with Spotify. It’s competing with attention. If it’s not compelling in the first ten seconds, her generation scrolls away. She’s not waiting for “weather on the 8s” or “news at the top of the hour.” She doesn’t even know what “top of the hour” means.
Radio was never supposed to be safe. It started as a pirate signal, a human voice breaking through static. Over time, corporate America sanitized it, programmed the soul out of it, and left listeners like Taylor behind.
But there’s still time.
Taylor may never care about call letters or towers. But she, and millions like her, care about authenticity. About audio that surprises. About voices that feel human.
The future of radio isn’t reinvention. It’s remembering what made it matter, and giving the next generation the mic. Grab a cup of coffee and go ask them yourself, you’ll see.
Erik Cudd is a three-decade broadcast professional and journalist living outside Washington, DC.
She would have had a completely different response if radio was still local, live and compelling. Spotify and other music services can’t compete with that. But radio’s consolidated, voice tracked crap isn’t compelling at all. It takes real, live people to create compelling content. That’s no longer an option and radio is slowly and inexorably dying.
just waiting for someone on a music station to do anything that makes me say “ i can’t believe they’re doing THAT!”
but i hear it on talk stations all day
Great article! Couldn’t agree more.
Spot..ify On! When I was a child, radio was live, not voice tracked or recorded.
And in all markets there was sincere live talent behind the mics. In major markets
there were plenty of interesting personalities and story tellers and folks who talked to
us, not at us. That’s what attracted me to get involved with radio in college and make it
a lifetime career.
This is the end product of making music the sole focus of music oriented radio. As Jerry Colliano preached for years, personality is what differentiates radio from other music delivery platforms. Yes, it was expensive and top talent was often temperamental, but their very presence was a selling point to set you apart from other stations, even when those stations were seeking the same audience.
Respect. But don’t agree. I advise radio to lean into its strength. NOT with Algorithms. I bet there are some ( perhaps even enough) young people who would be interested in the surprises, the companionship and the real-time references. But mostly the personalities must be better and the formats looser and genuinely local. Good luck competing with AI!
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