By Erik Cudd
I saw a recent advertisement seeking a morning co-host and content creator that raises questions that extend far beyond one station, one programmer, or one opening. It reflects a broader debate radio has been having for years: Are stations searching for the best audio personalities and teaching them to succeed digitally, or are they finding successful digital creators and assuming their abilities will translate to radio?
The advertisement seeks a “younger female co-host” who lives her life on social media, shares personal experiences online, and possesses a “big personality.” Social-media ability is clearly valuable in today’s business. A morning personality should be able to extend a show beyond the broadcast, create usable digital content, interact with listeners, and help the station remain visible throughout the day.
The concern is not that those skills are being requested. The concern is that they appear to be the primary qualifications.
The wording also produces several immediate questions.
How young is “younger”? Is the station looking for someone who understands younger listeners, someone who sounds youthful, or someone who falls within an unstated age range? Those are not necessarily the same thing. The phrase is also worth reviewing from an employment standpoint. EEOC guidance states that job advertisements generally may not express a preference based on sex or discourage applicants because they are 40 or older. Its guidance specifically identifies advertisements seeking “females” as potentially problematic.
More importantly from a programming perspective, what exactly constitutes the required social-media skill?
Is success measured by follower count, engagement, video-production ability, consistency, storytelling, community interaction, or the ability to turn an on-air segment into digital content? Those are different competencies. A person can accumulate an impressive following without demonstrating that she can listen to a partner, advance a conversation, edit herself in real time, create callbacks, manage the clock, recover from a weak segment, or make one listener feel personally included.
How will “big personality” be evaluated?
Personality can certainly be assessed through more than a traditional aircheck. A station could conduct live auditions, chemistry sessions with the existing host, mock show segments, listener-call exercises, local-event assignments, interviews and spontaneous content-development tests. But replacing an aircheck with a social feed does not necessarily produce a more complete evaluation. It may simply substitute one incomplete snapshot for another.
Creating an effective 60-second social video is different from sustaining a compelling three- or four-hour radio program. Radio requires continuity, timing, economy, collaboration and the gradual construction of a listener relationship across multiple breaks and multiple days. Some digital creators can make that transition. Others, not so much.
That does not mean radio should retreat into nostalgia or dismiss creators. Digital personalities often understand audience feedback, experimentation, consistency and self-promotion better than traditional broadcasters. Radio needs those instincts. But social-media success should be treated as evidence of one useful skill set, not as a proxy for microphone performance.
There is also a difference between casting a show and identifying the person most capable of connecting through audio.
Casting is legitimate. Every successful ensemble needs balance, contrast, chemistry and clearly defined roles. A programmer may reasonably believe the existing show needs a different life perspective, energy level or point of view. But the role should be defined by what the person must contribute: curiosity, humor, vulnerability, local involvement, conversational agility, cultural awareness, storytelling or the ability to challenge the primary host.
When casting is reduced to demographic shorthand, the station may unintentionally narrow the field before discovering who can actually perform the required function.
The Talent Pool May Be Broader Than the Social Feed
That narrowing of the field carries another risk: overlooking experienced broadcasters whose abilities may not be visible through a current social-media profile.
The marketplace includes experienced talent displaced by consolidation, layoffs, format changes, or station closures. Others may have moved from music radio into news, talk, or personality-driven programming. Some have not maintained an active video presence or personal social-media brand because their previous positions did not require one. Other reasons my be due to the sale of Twitter into X, the emergence of Bluesky, and the overt political influences that now saturate these platforms.
That absence should not be mistaken for an inability to engage an audience. Experienced broadcasters may bring years of live performance, interviewing, storytelling, community involvement, preparation, timing, and audience connection. Digital skills can be developed. The harder qualities to manufacture are judgment, chemistry, authenticity, and the ability to create a relationship through the microphone.
A modern talent search should evaluate digital potential without allowing a limited social-media footprint to automatically exclude proven audio professionals.
The available audience research also suggests caution before treating video prowess as the principal predictor of radio success. Jacobs Media research summarized by Radio Matters found that 61% of surveyed radio listeners identified particular DJs, hosts or shows as a principal reason they listen. The same report cited Katz research indicating that approximately half of listeners have a favorite radio personality and have listened to that personality for an average of eight years.
That is not simply reach. It is habit, familiarity and accumulated trust.
Audio itself remains a substantial part of Americans’ daily media use. Edison Research and Nielsen reported nearly four hours of daily audio consumption in the third quarter of 2025. Within ad-supported audio, radio received 62% of listening time, compared with 20% for podcasts and 15% for streaming music.
Advertising research should not be confused with talent research, but it reinforces the point that audio is not merely video without pictures. A Dentsu and Lumen study found that radio generated higher attention efficiency than the digital, social and television benchmarks examined and was ten times more efficient than the average online-video advertisement measured in that research.
The lesson is not that video is unimportant. The lesson is that audio has its own demands, advantages and forms of intimacy. Those qualities deserve to be tested directly when filling an audio position.
A stronger advertisement might therefore seek a compelling morning-show partner who can demonstrate conversational chemistry, concise storytelling, curiosity, preparation, community presence and the ability to develop a lasting one-to-one relationship with listeners, while also possessing, or being willing to develop, meaningful digital-content skills.
That would still allow the station to cast strategically. It would still recognize the realities of modern content creation. But it would place the priorities in the proper order.
The industry should absolutely search TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, podcasts, comedy clubs, colleges and local communities for its next generation of talent. It should simply avoid assuming that visibility equals intimacy, that followers equal loyalty, or that an interesting life automatically becomes interesting radio.
The most successful hire may indeed be a gifted social creator. But before handing that person a chair on an established morning show, the essential question should remain the one radio has always had to answer:
Can this person make listeners care enough to come back tomorrow?
Erik Cudd is a three-decade broadcast professional and journalist living outside Washington, DC.
