Last week was a bad one in radio. iHeartMedia made cuts across programming, and a lot of good people found themselves on the wrong side of a corporate decision. Some were hosts. Some were programmers. And some had survived enough previous rounds to think — or at least hope — this one might pass them by. It didn’t.
I’ve been on both sides of the hatchet. I’ve held it, and I’ve been on the receiving end of it. Neither place is comfortable, and neither one leaves you feeling great about the business.
When The Cut Comes
When you’re the one getting cut, there’s no way to make it land softly. It hurts. It makes you angry. And it makes you question what you did wrong, even when the honest answer is nothing. Radio is personal that way. This is not a business where people punch in, do the minimum, and go home. Radio people give this industry nights, weekends, holidays, parking lot remotes, bad hotel rooms, missed family moments, and more emotional investment than any reasonable career counselor would advise.
So when people lose jobs, we should feel that. We should say so. Real careers get interrupted. Families get squeezed. People who gave years to a station, a format, a company, and a listener base suddenly find themselves out. That deserves more than a LinkedIn post and a couple of industry condolences.
The Other Side Of The Desk
But here’s the part that gets complicated. Sometimes the person holding the hatchet didn’t build the spreadsheet.
The market manager, the PD, the ops manager — whoever walks into that room — may not have made the decision that led to it. They may not have decided the company needed to run leaner, that a position had to disappear, or that a market needed restructuring. And if you’re sane, you don’t want that job. Nobody grows up dreaming about the moment they have to look someone in the eye and tell them their career just changed — especially when it’s a decision that came from somewhere above them. That weight is real, even if it doesn’t compare to the weight on the other side of the desk.
I’m not asking anyone to feel sorry for the hatchet man. Nobody needs a plaque. The person losing the job takes the bigger hit.
The Math Nobody Wants To Talk About
Still, I think we don’t talk enough about the broader reality that creates these moments in the first place. Radio is working against fractionalized demand. The audience didn’t disappear overnight, but it spread itself across more platforms, more options, and more screens than this business was ever built to compete with. The economics don’t always make sense anymore — not at the staffing levels that felt normal fifteen years ago, not in every market, and not for every format. That doesn’t make every cut smart or every decision humane. But some of what we’re watching isn’t cruelty. It’s math. Painful, badly timed, poorly communicated math — but math nonetheless.
Nobody gets into radio because they want to tell people no. You get into it because you love the music, the audience, the on-air chaos, and the wonderfully dysfunctional business that’s impossible to explain to anyone with a normal job. Then one day you become the person who has to make the hard call. A show gets changed. A shift disappears. A good person gets caught in something that has nothing to do with their ability.
Fair Has Nothing To Do With It
A show can have loyal listeners and still not fit where the station is heading. A programmer can be genuinely talented and still get caught in a restructuring. Moreover, a staff member can be dedicated, well-liked, and excellent — and still get cut because the math no longer works.
That’s not fair. That’s radio.
So yes — let’s keep talking about the people who got cut last week. This industry moves on too fast, and too many good people get forgotten by the next book. But let’s also be honest about the environment that keeps producing these moments. And let’s understand that not everyone holding the hatchet is the villain.
Sometimes they’re just the person who had to make the call nobody wanted to make, for reasons that started long before they walked into that room.
And it’s a room nobody wants to be in.
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David Hill serves as a Music Radio Editor, Columnist and Features writer for Barrett Media. A radio lifer with more than 30 years behind the mic, in the control room, and in the program director’s chair, David’s career spans influential stops at brands such as WIYY 98 Rock, WBAL-AM, and 99X. He has worked across multiple formats and ownership groups, including iHeartMedia and Cumulus Media, developing talent, breaking music, and navigating every major industry shift from diary to PPM and terrestrial dominance to streaming disruption. When he’s not writing or analyzing the industry, Dave runs The Tune Farm, a marketing firm built to help artists and brands grow audience the same way great radio always has—by creating connection, not just impressions. He can be reached at David@BarrettMedia.com.
