News/Talk has quietly become radio’s most dominant format, out-listened to by nothing else on the dial, per a new marketer’s guide from Audacy that ties the format’s loyalty to real advertiser results, including a 24% average lift in web traffic across categories.
News/Talk captures 10.9% of all daily radio listening across broadcast and streaming, ahead of Adult Contemporary (7.1%), Country (5.8%), and Classic Hits (5.4%), per Nielsen Audio’s Q1 2026 edition of The Record. The gap widens on AM/FM station streaming specifically, where News/Talk pulls 23.2% share, roughly double the next-closest format.
That reach, Audacy says, comes from a fanatical core audience. A quarter of Americans now consider themselves “News Fanatics,” checking headlines more than five times a day, a behavior Stagwell’s Future of News study likens to devoted sports fandom. Fifty-four percent of News/Talk listeners are P1s, meaning the format is their primary listening choice, compared with 41% of sports fans who say the same about sports programming, and their listening sessions run 45% longer than the average news station’s, per Nielsen Scarborough.
Ad-exposed News/Talk listeners show 56% awareness lift, 47% consideration lift, and 49% conversion, according to Nielsen Commspoint Influence and MRI Simmons data. Audacy’s own client analytics found an average 24% lift in web traffic following News/Talk radio campaigns, ranging from a 6% bump for auto advertisers to a 67% jump for travel and tourism brands; home improvement (43%), legal (28%), and financial and health/fitness advertisers (21% each) also saw double-digit gains.
Trust plays a role too. In a 2024 Alter Agents study commissioned by Audacy, 84% of local news listeners said they trust local news radio, edging out broadcast TV (82%), national news radio (79%), and social media (74%).
News/Talk listeners carry a median household income of $95,000 and are 1.5 times more likely than the general population to have a net worth above $2 million, per Nielsen Scarborough. Politically, the audience skews more purple than red or blue: across stations including WCCO-AM in Minneapolis, WPHT-AM in Philadelphia, and KDKA in Pittsburgh, roughly half of listeners identify as independent or independent-leaning, based on Nielsen’s most current DMA-level data.
Listening habits are shifting toward mobile and streaming, too. Fifty-two percent of News/Talk consumption now happens on mobile devices, twice the rate seen in other formats, and streaming delivers twice the listening among Millennials that over-the-air does, according to Triton Digital and Nielsen Audio data.
The full Marketer’s Guide to News/Talk is available via Audacy.
