Ask radio listeners why they still tune in, and one word keeps coming up: connection. That’s the theme of a new qualitative study from Coleman Insights, presented on August 27 as “The Listener Truth” by Coleman VP/Consultant Jay Nachlis, drawing on interviews with ten radio listeners.
The participants ranged in age from 24 to 46, and each listened to at least one FM morning show weekly, drawn from current and recurrent formats including CHR, Hot AC, Rock, Alternative, Country, and Urban, with quotas ensuring the sample wasn’t concentrated in any single market. Questions were chosen from submissions made by attendees of Morning Show Boot Camp.
Convenience came up often as a reason listeners choose radio.
“I don’t want to be on my phone and driving, having to flip through songs, and you can only skip so much on Spotify if you don’t pay for it,” one listener said. “I don’t mind the radio.”
One listener, identified as Alex, framed radio’s value in broader terms, calling it “the most important medium that we have, at least in my opinion,” and pointing to its reliability in a crisis: “That is the best way to get instant information. Like when, God forbid, the grid goes down or something, they’ll always be able to get radio waves one way or another.” Another listener, Jesus, described choosing stations by mood, saying he listens to a contemporary Christian station when he wakes up feeling down and a Hot AC station when he wants to keep his spirits up.
Several listeners described tuning out news and politics specifically to avoid feeling overwhelmed.
“During the time of elections, everybody had their point of view, and that made me stop listening to a lot of radio stations,” one said. “It gets a little far, you know? It makes people tune out.” Another described abandoning a station over political content entirely: “I used to listen to that religiously every morning, and then I just couldn’t deal with the onslaught.” A third put it more simply, describing trivia and stories about bad dates as “escape from the horrors that exist out here.”
Despite near-universal smartphone use, listeners said they still trust radio’s delivery of weather and traffic more than an app. “You can’t really rely solely on our phones, and sometimes there’s a lot of inaccuracy with weather,” one listener said. “Having that individual out there checking is better than me just going off my phone and then getting caught in the rain.” Another cited the convenience of not looking at a screen, saying the information “comes through my ear” instead. A third connected the value directly to accessibility, noting that older listeners or those less comfortable with technology depend on hearing weather on the radio rather than looking it up themselves.
On content, several listeners said they enjoy lighter, story-driven material.
“I’m really big on celebrity gossip,” one said. “I’m not too big on the news, because a lot of the times I think they’re a little dramatic. It puts thoughts in my head that I don’t need.” Trivia drew consistent praise, with one listener saying, “They do make me listen, especially trivia. I would never call in, but I love playing along in the car.” But politics came up again as a turnoff: “I wish they talked a little bit less about politics, I’ll be honest. I like when people talk about the everyday stuff. I like debates, but not too heated.”
Listeners also said they understand and respond to on-air teases, though conditionally. “If I hear a juicy piece of gossip, like, ‘Bieber is going to headline the World Cup final, let’s talk about how that came about, coming up next,’ that’s awesome,” one said. “I want to hear about that.”
Every listener interviewed raised song repetition as a frustration. “Twice in the same hour, if it’s different songs, I can handle it. When it’s the same song, and it gets spammed over and over, that’s when I turn completely away from that station for the day,” one said. Another was more blunt: “If you only listen to one radio station, you’re going to hear the same six songs in 30 minutes.” Nachlis cautioned that the complaint isn’t new and doesn’t necessarily signal a growing crisis, though he said stations should still be aware of how repetition images form.
Commercials drew a more nuanced response. “I kind of like them. It makes me feel like I’m in the present,” one listener said. Another appreciated radio’s creative variety, saying commercials on radio “are always different” and “have to go a little further to get the attention of listeners.” But quality and frequency still matter, with one listener adding, “I just wish the commercials got a little help from the radio channel, because some of them just aren’t that good.”
Younger listeners flagged a content gap but still valued what algorithmic streaming can’t replicate. Tyrese said his peers gravitate elsewhere: “A lot of people don’t listen to the mainstream media. They listen to music that might not always be for the radio. I think it’s just a disconnect between the age groups and mainstream radio.” But Carolyn, 24, said she’d miss radio’s randomness: “With Spotify, you can find songs you already listen to. But with the radio, it’s a lot more random. You’ll hear a song pop up and be like, ‘oh my God, I haven’t heard this in forever.'”
Resistance to AI-hosted programming was broad and specific. “I’m always going to be an advocate for the humans over the AI bots,” one listener said. “I just don’t want to listen to a robot.” Another tied the objection to authenticity: “I haven’t identified any AI DJs yet, and I don’t think I would dig it, just because I value the spontaneity of it all. I like to hear a little cough in the background, that it’s being done live and that things can change at any moment.” A third drew a line for the medium itself, saying that if radio replaced its people with AI, “at that point it’s a streaming service.”
