iHeartMedia Layoffs Hit Radio Hosts & Staff (AGAIN)

A message from Stephanie Seiple, Executive Director, Music Media Collective

Like many of you, I’ve spent the last few weeks watching wave after wave of layoffs at iHeart, affecting people across programming, promotions, digital, engineering, sales, and on-air.

What gets lost in the headlines is that we’re talking about people who spent years connecting listeners with artists, supporting local businesses, raising money for charities, promoting concerts, and serving the communities they called home. When companies make decisions based on margins only, it’s those professionals, their families, the artists, and the communities they serve that pay the price.

A lot of people are asking if this means radio is finally dead. I don’t think it is.

Radio still reaches millions of people every week. It’s free, easily accessible, and for many people it’s still the soundtrack to their commute, their workday, a summer road trip, or a backyard BBQ.

What changed wasn’t the audience. The product changed. Listeners didn’t leave because they stopped caring about radio. They left because radio stopped giving them the experience they fell in love with.

As ownership consolidated and a handful of conglomerates bought up thousands of stations, everything became less local. Playlists became more repetitive, stations increasingly sounded the same as programming decisions became more centralized, commercial breaks got longer, and artist discovery became harder to come by.

That’s why iHeart’s “Humans First” campaign earlier this year feels incredibly tone deaf, to say the least. The company told listeners and advertisers that its biggest advantage over streaming was the connection between local personalities and their communities. Yet here we are again watching them lay off many of the same people they claimed were their biggest advantage.

The good news is there are still public stations and smaller radio companies proving radio can thrive. That’s why I still believe radio has a future. But that future will be built by investing in local voices, real relationships with artists, and stronger connections with the communities they serve.

Moments like this are exactly why we started the Music Media Collective. We can’t stop layoffs from happening, but we can help strengthen the ecosystem around them by supporting independent voices, creating opportunities, and making sure people don’t have to navigate moments like this alone.

To everyone impacted by these layoffs, we’re thinking of you. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to the MMC, even if you just need someone to listen or you’re looking for resources.

Please also reach out to MusiCares. They provide confidential assistance for music professionals facing financial hardship, medical expenses, mental health challenges, family needs, and more.

If you’re hiring or have resources you’d like us to share with the community, please reach out.

Music media is a small industry. We can’t solve every challenge facing it today, but we can bring people together, build connections, and help open doors. Let’s show up for each other.

-Steph Seiple, MMC Executive Director