By Erik Cudd
This is not a complaint. I am trying to understand. After 30 years in the industry and spending the last four looking for a final place to offer myself for the next 15 or so, the mixed messages are hard to ignore.
I understand why talent must create video, understand social media, produce podcasts, build a personal brand, and develop followers across multiple platforms. Audiences have changed, advertisers want measurable results, and versatile talent has value.
But I keep coming back to a simple question:
At what point does being good at radio stop being what radio values most?
If digital reach matters more than the show itself, as some recent job ads seem to suggest, what exactly is the tower for?
What Is a Follower Worth?
Consider the local advertiser. The auto repair shop, florist, restaurant, dentist or car dealer needs customers who live close enough to buy something.
When we celebrate followers, video views, streams, and engagement, how much of that activity translates into local business?
A follower is not automatically a customer, and a view is not automatically revenue. If those metrics are driving local sales, are we measuring and demonstrating that connection to advertisers?
There may already be a better model for resolving this tension. Townsquare Media’s Ignite platform operates not only in Townsquare’s own markets but through partnerships with other local broadcasters. The concept is straightforward: Use the station’s local relationships and credibility, then add digital targeting, campaign measurement, and broader online inventory.
That gives the local advertiser something more meaningful than a follower count. It helps show whether people in the advertiser’s market saw the campaign and responded to it.
Maybe that is the distinction radio needs to make. Digital should not merely prove that a personality can generate engagement. It should help the station prove that its relationship with a local audience can generate measurable business results.
The Audience Hasn’t Left
Nielsen’s first-quarter 2026 The Record found that radio and podcasts together account for 82% of daily ad-supported audio listening. Nielsen’s radio category includes over-the-air listening and station streaming, so that figure is not terrestrial radio alone, but radio remains a major part of the ad-supported audio business.
The RAB/Borrell 2026 Digital Benchmarking Report found that radio stations generated $2.3 billion in digital advertising revenue in 2025, and digital represented 24.4% of total industry revenue.
That is a strong argument for investing in digital. It is not an argument that the broadcast product no longer matters.
If the Tower Is Secondary, Why Keep It?
Transmitters cost money. So do towers, leases, power, engineering, backup systems, and regulatory compliance. Broadcasters do not maintain that infrastructure for sentimental reasons. The signal must still create economic value.
If the future is primarily podcasts, streaming, video, social media and personality brands that exist independently of radio, why keep paying for terrestrial distribution?
Take the logic all the way. Turn off the transmitter and invest the savings in great podcasters, digital creators, social talent and online sales.
Most broadcasters would consider that extreme. So would I.
Which means the tower still matters. If it does, shouldn’t what comes out of it matter just as much?
Are We Diluting What Makes Radio Different?
In Jacobs Media’s Techsurvey 2025, nearly 25,000 core commercial radio listeners participated. For the seventh straight year, personalities narrowly outranked music as a main reason they listen to broadcast radio.
Music is everywhere. A distinctive personality is not. Yet in a 2025 Jacobs Media analysis, more than four in 10 personalities agreed or strongly agreed that social media often takes time away from doing their show. That does not mean talent should ignore social media.
It means time is finite.
If a personality must prepare a strong show, create video, post across platforms, produce podcasts, handle appearances and perform other duties, something eventually gets less attention. What do we want that something to be?
What About Local?
In Techsurvey 2026, four in 10 respondents said a stronger local station presence was a plus. Jacobs also noted how difficult that becomes when staffs shrink and managers oversee multiple properties.
At the same time, major broadcasters continue to reduce staffs. In June, iHeartMedia cut on-air employees across the country as part of another round of cost reductions. Cumulus Media has been cutting as well. In August, Radio Ink reported layoffs across on-air, programming, sales, and podcasting roles in multiple Cumulus markets, adding another major broadcaster to the list of companies reducing the very local talent and infrastructure the industry’s research continues to describe as valuable.
Those decisions may be economically necessary. I do not pretend to know what individual balance sheets require. But the message is difficult to reconcile with what research and consultants continue telling us about personality and local connection.
It becomes even more interesting when you consider SiriusXM. In July, SiriusXM and Audacy announced that SiriusXM would add 42 Audacy sports, news, and talk stations from 29 markets. SiriusXM specifically cited the value of local personalities and hometown voices.
A national satellite and streaming company sees value in local radio brands and personalities while terrestrial companies continue reducing some of the staffs that create them. The economics are not identical, but the contrast is hard to ignore.
If personality matters, why reduce opportunities for personalities? If local matters, why make local programming harder? If terrestrial reach matters, why can decades of radio experience sometimes seem less valuable than a large social following?
Build Your Own Brand. Then What?
Talent are also told not to wait for radio to make them stars. Build your own brand. Start a podcast. Create video. Grow an audience. Become valuable independently. That appears to be excellent career advice. But it creates an interesting contradiction: Prove you can build an audience without radio, and you will become more valuable to radio.
What happens when you succeed?
Recent layoffs complicate the question. If established personalities can deliver ratings, recognition, and digital followings and still become casualties of restructuring, what exactly constitutes long-term value in the new model? That is not an argument against change. It is a question about what the industry is asking talent to become, and what it is promising them in return.
Digital First Shouldn’t Mean Radio Second
None of this argues against digital. Radio should stream, podcast, create video, and give advertisers better attribution. The question is whether digital first has to mean radio second. If models like Ignite work, perhaps the answer is not to choose between the tower and digital. Perhaps the broadcast product creates the local relationship, and digital gives us better tools to measure and monetize it.
So I return to the question: What is the tower for?
If terrestrial radio still provides valuable reach, accessibility, geographic concentration, and community connection, then we should invest in the people who make that signal worth hearing.
If the transmitter truly is becoming secondary, then we should be candid about that too. What is difficult to reconcile is the space in between.
We say personality matters while reducing opportunities for personalities. We say local matters while making local harder. We maintain expensive broadcast infrastructure while treating digital metrics as a primary measure of relevance. And we tell talent the best way to become valuable to radio is to prove they can build something valuable without it.
Maybe there is a coherent strategy behind all of this. After more than 30 years in radio, I would sincerely like to hear it. Because I do not believe the tower is dead… Yet.
I am simply wondering why so much of the advice surrounding radio sounds like preparation for the day when it is.
Erik Cudd is a three-decade broadcast professional and journalist living outside Washington, DC.
