iHeartMedia, the world’s largest broadcaster, has laid off another batch of employees in recent days as the debt-laden broadcast industry continues to shrink in the age of music streaming. “It seems now that the business model they’ve had over the past few years, where one person does the work of 40 people, is growing,” he said Nick Jordanwas the assistant programming director at country station WNCB in Raleigh, North Carolina, until he lost his job at iHeart on Monday (Nov. 4). “But we’re doing a good job of keeping everything local and community oriented as far as we can.”
iHeart has 860 stations in 160 markets across the U.S. and advertises “local iHeartRadio stations almost everywhere.” A representative for the company did not specify the number of recent layoffs, which follow March and several others since the pandemic hit. The result follows a wave of local layoffs. Broadcast news media, e.g. Broadcasting and music professionals This week, Barrett Media Inc. and Barrett Media listed more than a dozen people who were laid off, including morning show hosts, promotions and programming executives and metropolitan area directors. Jordan said he was watching video of iHeart colleague Bill Squire losing his job in Cleveland on Monday morning when “a big boss” walked into his own station to deliver the news.
“S— happened,” said Jordan, 31, a nine-year industry veteran. “That’s part of the broadcast business.”
Some studies suggest that despite a decline in radio listening, the business remains resilient, attracting 82% of U.S. adults as of 2022. Radio promotes employees, but the medium remains important for hit songs, especially in country music and other genres.
according to Wendy GoldbergAn iHeart spokesman said “few jobs” at the company, which employs 10,000 people, were affected. She disputed data showing a decline in audience consumption.
“We have more radio listeners than we did 10 years ago,” she said, citing a Nielsen study that showed a slight increase in younger listeners in the third quarter of this year. She added that iHeart remains “the No. 1 podcast publisher, bigger than the next two combined, and we’re five times the size of the second-largest digital radio service.”
“We have been able to achieve this goal by modernizing the company and increasing the use of technology,” Goldberg said in a statement. “These changes are another step in that journey.”
Squire, a stand-up comedian who has co-hosted the Alan Cox Show at Cleveland rock station WMMR since 2013, received news of the layoffs by phone Monday morning. he recalled.
Squire, who plans to return to the stage as a touring comedian to promote his album We’re Getting Famous, said broadcasters were “cutting costs wherever they can”. While Jordan hopes “the pendulum will swing back a little bit,” Squire said of media cuts: “You see it on radio, you see it on TV, a lot of Hollywood is going out of business right now. With the advent of the internet, YouTube, and podcasts, the entertainment landscape has changed so quickly that traditional media is trying to catch up and figure out how to adapt to it.
