The world’s biggest broadcaster, iHeartMedia, has cut another round of layoffs in recent days as the debt-ridden radio industry continues to contract in the era of music streaming. “Right now, it looks like the business model they’ve had for the last few years, of having one person do 40 people’s jobs, is what’s going,” he says Nick Jordanan assistant program director at Raleigh, NC country station WNCB until he lost his iHeart job on Monday (Nov. 4). “But we did a good job, as long as we could, of keeping everything local and community-oriented.”

A representative for iHeart, which owns 860 stations in 160 U.S. markets and advertises “there’s a local iHeartRadio station practically everywhere,” would not specify the number of recent layoffs, which follow a wave of job cuts in March and others after the pandemic. Radio news stations such as Radio and music professionals and Barrett Media listed more than a dozen names available this week, including morning show hosts, promotion and programming executives and regional directors in major cities. Jordan said he was watching a video Monday morning of Bill Squire, an iHeart colleague who lost his job in Cleveland, when “one of the big bosses” walked into his own station to deliver the news.

“S—it happens,” says Jordan, 31, a nine-year industry veteran. “It’s part of the radio business.”

Although the radio audience has declined, appropriately some studiesthe business remains resilient, reaching 82 percent of American adults as of 2022. And while major labels like Universal and Atlantic have duly laid off radio promotion staff over the past year, medium is still important to success, especially in the country . and other genres.

Conformable Wendy Goldbergan iHeart spokesman said “very few jobs” were affected at the 10,000-employee company. She rejects data suggesting a decline in audience consumption.

“Our broadcast radio audience has more listeners than it did 10 years ago,” she says, citing a Nielsen study showing that younger listeners grew slightly in the third quarter of this year. She adds that iHeart remains the “No. 1 podcasts, bigger than the next two combined, and we’re five times bigger than the next largest digital radio service.”

“We were able to achieve this by modernizing the company and increasing our use of technology,” Goldberg said in a statement. “These changes are another step in that journey.”

Squire, a stand-up comedian who co-hosted the Alan Cox Show on Cleveland rock station WMMR since 2013, received news of the layoff by phone Monday morning. the whole world. company and there’s nothing I can do,'” he recalls.

Squire, who plans to return to the road as a touring comic promoting his album We’re Getting Famous, says the radio business is “cutting costs wherever it can”. While Jordan hopes the “pendulum will swing back a little bit,” Squire says of the media cuts: “You see it on the radio, you see it on TV, a lot of Hollywood is out of business right now. The entertainment landscape has changed so quickly with the Internet, YouTube and podcasts that legacy media is just trying to catch up and figure out how to adapt.”