The business of radio news: Profitability dips
By Keren Henderson, Tim Mirabito and Akshaya Chandrasekaran
Radio news profitability slipped again in 2025, with 11.8% of stations reporting a profit, down from 13% the year before, according to the latest RTDNA/Newhouse School at Syracuse University Survey.
Profitability remains hard to predict from market or staff size alone; this year, stations in the South and West were more likely to report a profit than those in the Northeast or Midwest. On average, news accounted for 19% of station revenue, up slightly from last year, though the typical (median) contribution fell back to 5% after a brief jump to 10%. Radio website profitability improved modestly, rising 2.5 points, though more than half of stations still don't know whether their site turns a profit.
Budgets held mostly steady, with 64% of stations reporting no change, though that's down from 70% a year earlier, and non-commercial stations saw a notable pullback in budget increases. In a new question tied to federal policy shifts, most stations (76.8%) said the changes didn't apply to them, but the rest — disproportionately non-commercial stations — reported layoffs, coverage cutbacks and searches for alternative funding.
Reliance on outside news providers ticked up slightly to 21.4% of stations, with local TV stations remaining the most common source, though use of uncredited internet content and local newspapers grew sharply.
Artificial intelligence adoption grew fastest of any metric in the survey: 40.7% of radio news directors and general managers now report using AI in some capacity, up nearly 12 points from last year, led by the largest newsrooms and non-commercial stations. Writing remains the top AI use case (55%), followed by transcription (39%), with editing and policy development roughly tied at 18% each, and story-idea generation and research emerging as newer applications.
This annual survey, conducted in the fourth quarter of 2025, drew responses from more than 1,100 television stations and nearly 600 radio stations, and is supported by the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and the Radio Television Digital News Association.