The broadcast radio industry has been busy this year aligning its growing content reservoirs with distribution sources that make sense for their audiences. In some cases, new collaborations are opening the possibilities of radio stations with strong local content being able to actually expand its cume. Imagine that!
Exhibit A is iHeart’s distribution deal with Netflix for some of its biggest podcasts. I am not aware of specific data that have been released by either company to date. But conceptually, you can see the wisdom for Netflix, getting its scheduling machine around some of iHeart’s most popular pods. Conversely, the monster reach of Netflix opens the doors for iHeart to grow and reach new audiences. And in the case where podcasts are habit-forming, this mashup of video streaming’s biggest brand name with the largest radio company on Planet Earth is compelling.
Lately, both iHeart and Audacy were looking for the same synergy with, interestingly enough, a key competitor – SiriusXM. While many in radio are debating why on earth major radio companies would make some of their biggest and best station brands available to arch-rival SXM, the upsides are powerful, especially for a radio broadcasting industry that deep-sixed its once respectable marketing budgets around the time of the first Obama Administration.
After all, where is NEW radio cume going to come from – in the next three years, the next decade, and beyond? That’s the question any board member, shareholder, or investors ought to be asking radio owners and operators. It’s not as if consumers are acquiring new AM/FM radios. In fact, they keep disappearing from homes and workplaces at an alarming rate. Our latest commercial radio Techsurvey 2026 clearly shows only about seven in ten core listeners still have a working radio in their homes that they use.
And then there’s the car – that last bastion of radio listening – the firewall that will help radio retain its “king of the car” status. Until it isn’t.
I was thinking about this the other day when JacoBLOG loyal reader, John Covell, pointed me to a Wirecutter story ranking the top
tabletop radios for 2026. Seriously. Wirecutter is the consumer rating site owned by The New York Times with a tech emphasis, so they do features like this from time to time.
In case you’re interested, the winner is an analog radio, Sony’s ICF-506 (pictured), a bargain for $58 on Amazon. However, don’t expect them to go flying off the shelves anytime soon. Most of the people who read this blog are/were in broadcast radio. When was the last time any of YOU actually bought an AM/FM radio?
If broadcast radio has any shot for new growth moving forward, it will have to make smart, calculated decisions about where to place its bets – and with whom.
That thought struck me the other day when EMARKETER published a newsletter with data so obvious, most of us might scroll past it, perhaps pausing a moment to let out a well-deserved “Duh.”
As digital audio continues to steadily grow with each and ever year (and over-the-air continues to flag), radio marketers would be wise to use the available data to map out device and platform movement. Sure, broadcast radio companies and organizations should be commissioning their own research, but the good news is there is SO much relevant data to “borrow.”
A look at EMARKETER’s report is a smart starting point:
This handy chart is packed with a lot of truly relevant information about where the ears are…and where they’re going. While Boomers predictably lag in smartphone usage for digital audio consumption, the iPhone and its many cousins lead across all generations. In most cases, it’s not even close.
As the EMARKETER team reminds us, this data underscores the need for “mobile first creative.” But if you listen to most radio stations these days, you’re not likely to hear much in the way of even on-air marketing for smartphone usage (“Take us with you on vacation”) or the mobile apps station staffers no longer choose to put in an on-air marketing rotation.
Most programmers have concluded the audience knows that, thus negating the need to every promote smartphone related assets ever again. They’d much rather promote giving away $1,000/hour to some guy listening in Tacoma.
By the way, if you’re wondering how core radio listeners stack up in this same hierarchy, there is available data, thanks to Techsurvey. While the comparison is a bit apples-to-peaches, I went into our most recent dataset to pull out device ownership by generation, using the EMARKETER chart as my template:
No surprise – the basic pecking order is the same. Smartphones take the generational checkered flag from Z’s to Boomers. And by large margins, regular listeners to stations like yours are quite a bit less apt to own an AM/FM working radio where they live, trailing smartphone ownership across all these categories.
But when you look at both charts, you see a gap – especially among Boomers – digital audio listening versus smartphone owners. In other words, well more than nine in ten own a smartphone, but don’t use it as much to listen to digital audio. Maybe there’s a “teaching moment” here.
This would suggest a serious rethinking of how radio broadcasters pitch how, when, where, and why to access their stations and their apps to listen and to access features, such as donations in both public and Christian radio. Radio did a much better job in the 70’s of emphasizing and reinforcing the basic act of using presets to lock in their favorite station (“….AND RIP THE KNOB OFF!!”).
The other contributing data point on both the EMARKETER and Techsurvey charts is related to the rapid growth of smart TVs and digital audio consumption. As we know, this habit took flight during the early dark days of the pandemic when consumers gladly plunked down a few hundred bucks to level up their television situations at home. The need to access content on streamers like Netflix, Disney+, and the myriad of other platforms that sprouted up intensified to a point where now, more than three-fourths (77%) of core radio listeners own at least one smart TV.
Yet, a look at the EMARKETER digital audio usage chart shows that Millennials aside (30%), only about one-fifth of the other generations listen to content like podcasts – or radio stations – on their monster TVs made by Samsung, LG, Vizio, and the rest of the pack. Of course, the aforementioned iHeart/Netflix podcasting deal encourages this smart TV usage.
Is there upside potential with smart TV? We’ve begun to ask the audio listening question on smart TVs in all our Techsurveys.
As I’m sure iHeart’s research shows, the results show potential upside, especially with desirable streaming audio content:
Our data shows that once these connected TVs are attached to walls in dens, media rooms, kitchens, and bedrooms, younger generations of radio listeners – yes, new blood! – are most likely to figure out how to listen to radio. So, why not help them with on-air and online promos and videos that help them connect the technical dots?
There IS a path forward for radio generating new cume. Yes, it starts with having content that is stream-worthy. But it is also dependent on broadcast organizations no longer taking for granted that everyone listens to radio. The truth is, they no longer do.
But there’s no reason why they couldn’t….again.
President & Founder at Jacobs Media
Jacobs Media has consistently walked the walk in the digital space, providing insights and guidance through its well-read national Techsurveys.
In 2008, jacapps was launched – a mobile apps company that has designed and built more than 1,300 apps for both the Apple and Android platforms. In 2013, the DASH Conference was created – a mashup of radio and automotive, designed to foster better understanding of the “connected car” and its impact.
Along with providing the creative and intellectual direction for the company, Fred consults many of Jacobs Media’s commercial and public radio clients, in addition to media brands looking to thrive in the rapidly changing tech environment.
Fred was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2018.
