As we look ahead to 2026, I don’t see an especially rosy path for radio, and here’s why:
Large major-market group owners are killing radio, with round after round of cost-cutting that rarely results in profit. As I have reported before, iHeartMedia has never had a profitable year in its history, and the other publicly-traded groups for which data is available have posted profitable quarters here and there but are mostly operating at a loss.
This accounting-driven modus operandi leads to cutting the very soul out of our industry by eliminating much of the talent, which the corner-office suits view as interchangeable, transferable, and voice-trackable. It’s no wonder that if you travel from city to city—and not just in the U.S.—you hear the same radio stations over and over, with little or no sense of community.
The administration is killing free press. We’ve been over this before—the FCC threats, the lawsuits, the pressroom lockouts, and the ubiquitous cries of “fake news”—but it’s not getting any better. News organizations that do not push back will be exploited until they become little more than government mouthpieces.
There is bias in the press. There has always been bias in the press. Social media may have exacerbated the problem, but even during the hegemony of newspapers there were strong, obvious biases. (Where do you think the term “yellow press” comes from?)
But we certainly cannot “fix” press bias by government fiat. Sure, all news media have an agenda, a point of view. Is our society better off if some of those media are stilled? If so, which ones? If we allow government to control media, all media will report the same things the same way. And history teaches us that many more freedoms will fall in the aftermath.
We are neglecting our pipeline. We no longer have the part-time and intern positions that once fed our stations. On the air, we are relying on syndicated programming, voice tracking, and now AI jocks. And in the 125 years of radio’s existence, we still haven’t figured out how to consistently hire, motivate, and retain good sellers.
At some point in the future, we are going to run out of people. We are trading short-term expediency for long-term health. But I think any local radio operator will agree that, right now, we see no alternative.
What Gives Me Hope
The history of radio is riddled with crises. Those who lived through past ones will agree on two things:
While we’re in the middle of it, any given crisis feels like the end of radio as we know it.
After we get through it, that same crisis usually proves to be manageable.
The current flood of challenges certainly checks both boxes. My hope for the new year is that we can spend less time reliving the panic of #1 and get busy working on #2. I hope we can look back on 2026 and say it was a year of solutions, not simply a continuation of the problems.