Radio’s biggest fans are still tuning in in a major way, but Jacobs Media’s Techsurvey 2026 raises two questions the industry can’t afford to keep kicking down the road much longer: who’s actually listening, and for how much longer will they be doing it over the air?
The annual survey drew nearly 31,000 completed responses from P1 listeners across 506 commercial radio stations in the US, collected online between January 7 and February 8 and weighted using Nielsen 2025 market population data. The survey represents station database members, not the general population.
During his presentation, Jacobs Media President Fred Jacobs noted that Audacy’s return to participation this year produced the largest year-over-year sample shift since Techsurvey’s early years, which may account for some trending differences.
The age picture is stark. The average respondent is now 58.4 years old, up from 58.0 in 2025 and 55.5 in 2023. One in three respondents is 65 or older, compared to one in four just three years ago. Boomers make up 45% of the sample, Gen X another 40%, with Millennials at 12% and Gen Z at just 2%. Jacobs noted the same aging trend is showing up in the company’s companion surveys for public radio and Christian music radio, suggesting it reflects the broader composition of station email databases rather than a data artifact.
“If you’re kind of doing your radio math here, we’ve been talking about the 25-to-54-year-old demographic for a long, long time,” Jacobs said during the webinar, “and the average listener in Techsurvey is quite a bit above 54.” That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. The industry has long treated the 55-plus audience as out-of-demo and therefore out of mind, but Jacobs pushed back on that framing.
Device ownership and digital behavior among listeners 55 and older has risen steadily since COVID. Smart TV ownership in that group climbed 16 points since 2021 to 75%. Streaming audio on a weekly basis hit 72%. Smart speaker ownership jumped from 30% to 42% over the same period. AI usage among the 55-plus cohort went from 3% in 2024 to 14% this year.
The broadcast-versus-digital story is moving just as fast. Broadcast accounted for 54% of the time P1 listeners spent with their favorite stations in a typical week, down from 59% a year ago. Digital climbed to 44%. The gap that stood at 71 points in 2013 has closed to 10. For context, digital was at just 14% a dozen years ago and has essentially tripled since. Among Gen Z listeners, digital already edges broadcast 49% to 48%. Millennials are close behind at 52% broadcast to 46% digital, and Gen X sits at 51% to 47%.
In the car, historically radio’s most protected turf, the erosion is just as visible.
AM/FM now accounts for 50% of in-car audio consumption on a typical weekday, down from 62% in 2018. SiriusXM accounts for 20% of that time, with streaming audio at 10%. Infotainment system ownership has risen from 24% to 40% since 2018, and Jacobs presented data showing those two trend lines moving in nearly direct opposition over the past eight years. Four in ten respondents now own a connected car with an infotainment system, up five points from last year alone.
Working radios at home are disappearing too. Just 72% of respondents said they have a working radio in their home that they use, an all-time low in the survey’s history and down from 83% in 2018. Among Millennials, that number falls to 61%.
There is counterprogramming in the data. Radio’s net promoter score rebounded to 48 after two consecutive years of decline, encouraging given that nearly 31,000 responses make the needle genuinely difficult to move. The score peaked at 50 during COVID, when Jacobs attributed the spike to listeners rediscovering local radio as communities grappled with the pandemic in real time. This year’s two-point recovery from 46 in 2025 snapped a slide Jacobs said had him watching the trendline with concern.
Personalities held their seven-year lead over music as the top programming driver. Six in ten respondents cited DJs, hosts, and shows as a main reason they listen, compared to 53% for favorite songs and artists. The crossover first happened in 2019, when personalities passed music for the first time, and the gap has held in every survey since. Music’s share has continued to erode as on-demand streaming has made catalog access frictionless.
“Music has essentially become commoditized,” Jacobs said. “When you can basically have every song at your fingertips on a device that’s the size of a pack of cigarettes, that’s a real game changer.”
Local identity remained a durable differentiator. Eighty-six percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that local feel is a primary radio advantage, a figure that has held well above 80% since COVID. Fifty-six percent said they feel a connection with local radio stations that they don’t feel with other audio. Among Hot AC listeners, that number climbs to 66%, with Country at 60%.
AI usage among radio listeners nearly doubled year over year. Among respondents familiar with AI, 29% reported using it at least weekly, up from 14% in 2025 and 9% in 2024. Despite that adoption growth, the alarm rate held steady: 68% said the rate at which AI is progressing is alarming, unchanged from 2025. Among employed respondents, 17% expressed concern about losing their jobs to AI, rising to 38% among Gen Z workers.
The survey also tested anti-digital messaging slogans. “It’s FREE — No Subscription Required” scored highest at 72%, edging out “Our Music Is Curated By People, Not Bots” at 63% and iHeartMedia’s “Guaranteed Human” tagline at 62%. Jacobs said the free positioning has tested well historically and could be deployed immediately by any station without risk.
The full Techsurvey 2026 webinar is available on-demand.
