By Bill Bernardoni
Listeners aren’t leaving radio for a technology. They’re following people. New podcast research found 81% of radio listeners with a favorite podcast say the host is a big part of why they listen, or the only reason.
I still remember where I was when the Bears traded for Jay Cutler. I’d just walked out of my last class of the day at Greenville College, turned the key, pulled out of the parking lot, and there they were: Dan Bernstein and Terry Boers on The Score, owning the story the way only they could.
I didn’t remember the trade because of the trade. I remembered it because of who told me.
And who told me carried weight. Terry Boers came to radio from the Chicago Sun-Times, where he covered the Bulls and wrote lines people still quote, like “May the Pistons rest in pieces” after the Bulls finally got past Detroit in 1991. He was one of The Score’s original hosts when the station signed on in 1992, and from 1999 until he retired in 2017, Boers and Bernstein was the longest-running sports-talk show in Chicago, the home of “Friday Fung” and “Who You Crappin’?” When Terry died in January 2026, Bernstein summed him up: “He didn’t really have to know radio; he just had to be Terry.” Nobody tuned in for the call letters. They tuned in for Terry.
In March 2025, The Score fired Bernstein after an ugly exchange with a follower on social media, ending nearly thirty years at the station. Barrett Media later called it a “moment of personal lapse on social media.” He’s never pretended otherwise. On the first episode of his podcast, he owned it: “There’s no vast conspiracy here. It’s my fault.” A minute later: “Everything that happened to me I earned.”
I agree with him. Honestly, it probably should have happened sooner. In June 2015, The Score suspended him for a day over a tweet about a Chicago TV meteorologist, the second time in a few months a tweet had landed him in hot water. What kept him on the air was simple: he was that good, and the ratings kept backing him up. And the people the station put in that midday slot have been solid. I said so at the time.
None of that changed what happened next. In August 2025 he came back on a podcast, Dan Bernstein Unfiltered on Hubbard’s 312 Sports, with his longtime producer Matt Abbatacola. A lot of us followed him there. I was one of them. Fourteen months and more than 300 episodes later, the show still drops every weekday, and 312 Sports has grown into a full podcast network, with Cubs, Bears, and Bulls shows and a daily show from Jason Goff.
The station kept the frequency, the format, and the Cubs and Bears talk. A chunk of the audience still went looking for one guy on a different app.
That’s how attached people get to a voice, and it’s nothing new. When NBC handed The Tonight Show to Jay Leno, David Letterman left Late Night and took his act to CBS in 1993. NBC kept the slot and the Late Night name. Letterman took the audience. He beat Leno nearly three to one on his first night at CBS and stayed ahead for most of two years. Nobody was watching for the slot. They were watching for Dave.
So when I see stations cut or swap hosts to save money, treating the person behind the mic like a line item, I know how that story ends. Listeners aren’t leaving radio for a technology. They’re following people.
The Data Says the Host Is the Product
On Oct. 21, Radio Ink reported new findings from The Podcast Study 2026 by Strategic Solutions Research and Point-To-Point Marketing, a survey of 1,205 podcast listeners ages 18 to 54. The numbers belong in your next budget meeting.
The overlap: 74% of these podcast listeners also hear local radio weekly or more, and 46% every day. One audience, two dials.
Why they stay: among radio listeners with a favorite podcast, 81% say the host is a big part of why they listen, or the only reason. Among daily radio listeners, 24% say the host is the only reason.
Why they buy: among daily radio listeners, 47% say host-read ads strongly influence them, versus 34% for pre-recorded spots, according to Inside Radio. And 62% sit through host-reads because they enjoy the host. That’s a stop set people don’t tune out.
The host is the product. The music, the format, and the frequency are the packaging.
So run the station like it. Break out what your host-reads and live endorsements bring in, separate from general spot revenue, so you know what each voice actually sells. Price those reads as premium inventory instead of tossing them in as a bonus. And before any host lands on a cut list, put that number next to the salary. Don’t cut the voice that sells.
The Audience Didn’t Leave. It Drifted.
The most hopeful number is about the people radio thinks it has lost. Among respondents who listen to local radio less than weekly, 75% have listened before, and 48% still tune in at least every few months. They’re lapsed, not lost.
What pulls them toward a new show? About half of light radio users say they try new podcasts because of the host. And 65% of radio listeners see two or more clips before trying a new podcast; 43% say recognizing or liking the host is what gets them to try it.
They’ll come back for a voice they know. They won’t come back for a slot.
The Case for Cutting Is Real
I want to be fair to the people making hard calls. I’ve sat in that chair. I’ve been the morning host and the play-by-play voice, and I’ve been the operations director and program director building a schedule around who was available and what the budget allowed.
The money is real. The NAB, citing BIA data, says radio ad revenue fell more than 30% between 2007 and 2025, and that most stations earn less than $2.9 million a year in advertising, as Radio Ink reported in July. Those numbers give broadcasters’ argument for scale real weight.
But look at the cuts. That same report described a round of iHeartMedia layoffs hitting programmers and air talent in dozens of markets, with Atlantic City, Cedar Rapids, and Spokane among those reported to have lost most of their remaining local on-air talent. A coalition of music groups told the FCC that more consolidation won’t “restore popular local on-air personalities.” The NAB disputes their motives. Whoever’s right, the study tells us what the listener does in the meantime: when the host goes, the habit goes with them.
So, to the managers and owners reading this: stop defending what radio was and start building what it’s becoming. Your listeners already live in podcasts, on YouTube, and on their phones. Go meet them there. Turn your morning show into a daily podcast. Put your best local voice on video. The stations that win the next ten years won’t be the ones that protected the transmitter. They’ll be the ones that figured out radio is a voice and a relationship, and both of those travel.
And don’t leave local news in the dust because it’s the easiest line to cut. It’s the one thing nobody else in your market can do as well as you. A national feed can’t cover your school board or the storm rolling through your county. Do it well, and listeners remember who was there for them, and they stay for life. Done right, it pays for itself: local businesses want their names next to a newscast their customers trust. That’s not an expense. It’s an investment.
The Networks Are Already Reorganizing Around Talent
The business side is catching on. On Oct. 22, Gemini XIII retired the United Stations Radio Networks name, a syndication brand Dick Clark co-founded in 1994, and folded it and two podcast networks into one company, Gemini Networks, with radio, podcasts, streaming, and YouTube under one management team.
I spent years producing syndicated programs, so that gets my attention. The story is that syndication is becoming a talent business that happens to reach radio. Most local stations won’t build a network. Every one can decide the morning host is worth more than the slot he or she sits in.
Podcasts Have a Leak of Their Own
Podcasts haven’t figured it all out either. The same study found 55% of radio listeners give a new podcast five minutes or less, 60% among daily listeners. And 54% say podcasts carry too many ads; 21% say they listen less because of them.
That’s radio’s edge, if it uses it. Radio trained a generation of hosts to hit the post, get to the point, and respect the clock. Play-by-play teaches it fast, because nobody waits for you to warm up.
The study’s own advice to radio: coach talent to get to the point in the first minute, put hosts on social every day, and give listeners a direct line to the people they come for. Among daily radio listeners, 44% say they’d definitely open an email from a host. None of that works if the host is gone by spring.
Build the Voice, Not the Slot
The most valuable thing a station owns is the handful of people listeners would follow anywhere. The tower and the format come after that.
Treat them like the brand, and give the next generation of hosts the reps to become someone worth following. When budgets force a choice, remember what listeners told us: they’ll forgive a format change long before they forgive losing a voice.
Nobody followed Bernstein to a podcast because podcasts beat radio. They followed him because he was Bernstein, even after he’d given the station every reason to let him go. If that kind of loyalty survives a firing the host himself says he earned, imagine what walks out the door when a station lets a good host go just to save money.
The Bottom Line
Radio and podcasts are sharing the same listeners, and those listeners keep saying the same thing: we’re here for the people.
The station that treats its hosts as interchangeable will find out its audience is too.
Bill Bernardoni is the founder of Bernardoni Media & Marketing in Ottawa, Illinois. He has worked in radio as a morning host, play-by-play voice, operations director, and program director, and now produces podcasts and radio programs for organizations nationwide.
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