Broadcasters renew push for U.S. AM radio legislation on Capitol Hill
PARIS — RedTech’s RadioWeek 2026, held online Jan. 26–30, brought together industry leaders across five focused sessions to examine how broadcasters can turn current challenges into opportunities. Data visibility, security risks and AI adoption dominated discussions, with one consistent theme emerging: Radio doesn’t need reinvention. It needs smarter execution.
Faster data cycles
The week’s opening session explored connected-car platforms and their role in radio’s data transformation. These platforms, along with hybrid broadcast/IP delivery and richer metadata, are making radio measurable at speed and scale. Listening behavior that once took months to surface now informs real-time programming and sales decisions.
Joe D’Angelo, senior V.P. of commercial strategy and partnerships at Xperi, underscored how dramatically expectations have shifted. “By 4 or 5 a.m. the next day,” he noted, “you will have access to all of the data for the previous day.” The implications go further than convenience. Xperi says that in markets such as Dallas, DTS AutoStage is already measuring more than 107,000 active vehicles daily, a sample roughly 50 times larger than traditional audience panels. For broadcasters, that kind of granularity changes what is possible in programming and sales conversations.
The commercial case is taking shape quickly. Advertisers are willing to pay an average of 14% more in exchange for visual ads displayed on connected dashboards, according to research shared during the session. Steve Newberry, CEO of Quu, cited the example of one major broadcasting group in the United States that has already generated US$6 million in visual ad revenue through this channel. However, he declined to name the group. Pierre Bouvard, chief insights officer at Cumulus Media and Westwood One, confirmed the trend, saying that Cumulus is seeing a significant lift in visual revenue across its stations. Participation in the DTS AutoStage platform is free for broadcasters, considerably lowering the barrier to entry.
The takeaway: Visibility in the car is about more than signal strength. It is about being easy to find, tune and measure.
We’re not here to kill the existing craft of radio. We’re here to enhance it and then to industrialize the mundane.
Quentin Howard, media executive and technology consultant
Human loyalty wins
Day Two of RadioWeek reinforced a familiar truth: Despite rapid technological change, audience loyalty is still built by humans. Stations retaining listeners, particularly younger ones, are not chasing algorithmic optimization. Instead, they are investing in curation, strong personalities and community-driven experiences listeners actively identify with.
Morgan Chosnyk, programming group director at KEXP, a nonprofit radio station in Seattle, described a model where listeners become the primary growth engine. “Our best marketing tool is our listeners,” she said, with fans recommending the station organically because they feel part of something distinct. She explained that KEXP’s nearly 50 DJs make every scheduling decision themselves, deliberately blending the familiar with the unfamiliar to bring audiences along rather than simply confirming their existing tastes.
Across markets, speakers emphasized that radio succeeds when it reflects culture rather than just content. Sami Tenkanen, CEO of Bauer Media Audio Finland and co-CEO of Bauer Media Audio Sweden, described how stations targeting younger audiences choose presenters partly for their existing social media followings, not to chase platforms, but to bring those communities into the radio ecosystem.
The takeaway: Platforms may offer convenience, but radio offers connection, and that remains a powerful differentiator.
Security reality check
Day Three delivered the week’s most urgent warning: Cybersecurity is a front-line operational risk.
Michael Thielen, V.P. consulting services at CGI, and his colleague Sebastian Jansen, a cybersecurity specialist at the company, outlined three specific threats now facing broadcasters. The first is AI-powered voice impersonation, where generative technology has advanced to the point that it can convincingly replicate a presenter, executive, or public official’s voice and use it to broadcast false information.
The second is the speed mismatch of real-time incident response: A 15-minute security service-level agreement, standard in conventional IT environments, is already too slow for a live broadcast operation. Jansen said, “If you apply traditional IT response times to radio, 15 minutes is already too late.”
The third is supply chain vulnerability, illustrated by the SolarWinds attack, in which malicious code distributed through a trusted vendor’s update took thousands of organizations offline without warning.
Thielen reinforced the stakes with a case study that needed no elaboration: Funke Mediengruppe in Germany was unable to publish its newspapers for more than five weeks following a 2020 cyberattack. Incidents like this have occurred across the U.S., Europe, Africa and Australia.
The session stressed fundamentals like hardened backups, staff awareness training, recovery drills, network segmentation and leadership ownership of security planning.
The takeaway: Cyber resilience is now as critical as transmission infrastructure, and no station is too small to be targeted.
It’s not the question of if something could happen
Michael Thielen, V.P. consulting services, CGI
to you. It’s the question of when.
AI with guardrails
Artificial intelligence featured heavily throughout RadioWeek, but the tone remained pragmatic rather than promotional.
Day Four introduced CaptionCast Media, an AI-assisted audio production platform making its first public appearance before a broadcast industry audience. Founded by Detlef Wiese, who also created the audio networking platform developer Ferncast, the system converts written content into studio-quality audio, adapting tone, pace, voice and language to suit different platforms, audiences and contexts. The same news update can be rendered as a calm afternoon bulletin, an upbeat morning show tease, or a simplified explainer for younger listeners, all without a recording booth.
The session reinforced the fact that AI is proving most valuable when used to extend existing content, not replace creative decision-making. Transcription, summarization and AI-assisted production allow stations to repurpose talk and news across platforms without increasing workload.
Speakers repeatedly stressed the importance of editorial control. Quentin Howard, media executive and technology consultant and advisor to CaptionCast, captured the prevailing sentiment plainly when he said, “We’re not here to kill the existing craft of radio. We’re here to enhance it and then to industrialize the mundane.” Valentino Megale, professor at Rome Business School and program director of its International On-Campus Master’s in AI, reinforced the point. “The choices that define a station’s identity, tone, cultural positioning and editorial stance, remain irreducibly human,” he said.
The takeaway: Human oversight, brand voice and accountability remain nonnegotiable — AI accelerates workflows but trust still requires judgment.
Audio intelligence grows
RadioWeek closed by connecting AI directly to radio’s core economics. Christian Müller, founder and managing director of Radiozeit, and Robert Förster, its COO, demonstrated how continuous transcription transforms audio into structured data, enabling deeper programming insight and smarter commercial strategy. Transcription-driven ad monitoring allows sales teams to identify which advertisers are spending on competitor stations, including estimated budgets and timing, and target them directly. The integration with CRM systems means those leads can flow straight into existing sales workflows, surfacing potential clients that teams may never have identified otherwise.
The platform also opens a less obvious but significant opportunity: Multilingual accessibility. Using the same content and music package, a German broadcaster, for example, can serve diaspora communities, such as Turkish, Ukrainian or Polish listeners, without additional production costs.
For programmers, AI-based content analysis supports long-term pattern recognition rather than isolated airchecks. Tim Torno, founder of keepitUP!, explained how this shifts internal conversations away from opinion and toward evidence. “It’s not Tim’s view,” he said. “You can put KPIs on it.” The shift matters because it reframes performance evaluation and talent development, replacing gut instinct with structured data that anyone in the organization can interrogate.
The takeaway: AI does not replace experience; it scales it.
The bottom line
Across five days, RadioWeek 2026 delivered a grounded message. Radio’s core strengths of trust, locality and human connection remain intact. What is changing is the infrastructure that supports them.
With faster data, smarter tools and responsible AI, radio is executing better.
Xperi, RCS, CGI, CaptionCast Media and Radiozeit sponsored Redtech’s RadioWeek 2026.
In case you missed it, sessions are available to view on demand here.
This story originally appeared in the March/April 2026 edition of RedTech Magazine. You can read or download it for free here.
You can access all past RedTech publications, for free, here.
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