Are radio announcers still needed? The numbers say something more interesting than a yes or no.

Radio listenership has been declining for three consecutive surveys. Over the same period, industry revenues are growing, and podcasts now reach 41% of Italians. It's not a dying medium: it's an audience that's redistributing itself.

Two curves going in different directions

Audiradio data for the second quarter of 2026 indicates 34,053 million listeners on an average day in Italy. The previous quarter's average was 34,792 million; the 2025 average was 35,053 million. This is the third consecutive decline and is part of a longer trend: RadioTER data recorded 35,077 million listeners in 2024, compared to 36,343 million in 2023.

Anyone who stops here has simple, incorrect news: the radio is going off.

A second indicator, however, points in the opposite direction, and comes from a different source. The AGCOM 2026 Annual Report estimates a radio market revenue of €634 million for 2025, up 1,6% from €624 million the previous year. A sector that loses listeners and increases revenue isn't a sector in liquidation: it's a sector that's changing what it sells.

And there's a third statistic that completes the picture. The Ipsos Digital Audio Survey finds that 41% of Italians between the ages of 16 and 60 have listened to at least one podcast in the past month—about 12,8 million people—up from 39% in the previous survey.

Listening time hasn't evaporated. It's just shifted.

What exactly is moving?

It pays to be precise about what the radio is losing, because not everything is the same.

Above all, we're losing undifferentiated background listening: the kind of listening that for decades was guaranteed by the lack of alternatives. Those who turned on the radio in the car or in the kitchen weren't choosing content; they were choosing companionship, and the selection was limited to what was playing on the airwaves. Today, the same person has the entire world's music catalog in their pocket, tens of thousands of podcasts, and the ability to pick up an episode right where they left off.

What radio hasn't lost is the function that no playlist can fulfill: being present in the moment, knowing what's happening now, and having someone to tell it. This is why broadcasters stopped competing on the quantity of music they play and started competing on the identity of the person behind the microphone.

Meanwhile, the skill that radio had developed for its medium—talking to someone who was doing something else, without images, keeping a rhythm—had become in demand everywhere.

The market for a speaker no longer coincides with the broadcasters

This is the point that radio listening numbers alone fail to demonstrate.

A voice professional today works in a field that didn't exist twenty years ago: editorial and corporate podcasts, audio content for streaming platforms, dubbing and voice-over work for advertising, audiobooks, moderating events and panels, live broadcasts and video formats where the spoken word carries the weight of the story, visual radio, and internal communications for companies that produce audio content on a regular basis.

They are different contexts in terms of audience, duration, and register, but they require the same core skills: building an outline, managing an interview, holding a speech together without relying on editing, recognizing when a pause is needed and when it's a gap.

In other words, the number of positions in FM radio has grown little or not at all. The number of situations requiring someone who knows how to do the job has grown significantly.

Why the barrier to entry hasn't been lowered

A recurring objection is that anyone can start a podcast these days, and therefore professionalism matters less.

The reasoning is the same as that applied to music when recording software became accessible, and it was disproved in the same way. Anyone can record: this is why most podcasts don't get more than a few dozen listens and are abandoned after a few episodes. Production has become free; listening hasn't, because people's time hasn't increased.

In a crowded environment, what makes a difference is no longer access to the microphone but the ability to stay on the airwaves after ninety seconds. And that ability is technical: diction and breathing, of course, but above all, pacing, building a setlist, truly listening to the interlocutor, and controlling tone in unexpected situations.

The training had to follow the move

If the market has expanded beyond broadcasters, preparation can no longer be modeled on a single outlet.

Those training today need to work on their voice and, at the same time, on what that voice needs to convey: setting up a format, hosting a live broadcast without a network, managing an uncooperative guest, adapting the same content for an FM broadcast and an on-demand episode that someone will listen to three weeks later. These are situations that are learned by experiencing them, not by describing them.

This is the approach with which organizations like Accademia09 build their courses for radio speakers , which combine work on the voice with the practice of hosting, interviewing and producing audio content intended for both broadcasters and digital channels.

A poorly posed question

Returning to the initial question: asking whether radio announcers are still needed means assuming that their profession coincides with the medium that gave them their name.

That's no longer the case, and that's probably a good thing. A skill that depends on a specific technology ages along with that technology. A skill that involves how a voice holds someone's attention outlasts any medium it's transported on—it did so from tubes to FM, from FM to digital, from digital to on-demand streaming.

The 34 million listeners on an average day will likely decline further. But over the same period, the number of people who put on headphones while someone is speaking will continue to increase. The profession isn't dying out: it's simply ceasing to be known as the medium in which it was born.