Survey: Radio News Directors Often Have Other Duties

In the latest report in a series developed from RTDNA's annual survey of newsrooms across the United States,  Bob Papper, Professor Emeritus - Hofstra University finds:

• News directors getting older, switching jobs quicker
• Radio news directors adding more duties beyond news
• Number of news directors named Kelly or Julie grows

The RTDNA/Hofstra University Annual Survey of local radio and television news highlights critically important data about the state of the industry.  This latest article, on TV and radio news directors, generally falls under the “more interesting” category rather than “critically important,” according to Papper.

Radio news directors used to come in a little younger than those in TV, but not this year or last year.

Overall, the average age in radio was 47.6, and the median was exactly 50.  Commercial station news directors were about 7 years older than those at public stations.  Counter intuitively, radio news directors in the biggest markets were slightly younger than others.  Radio news director ages ranged from 20 years old up to 84.

Radio news directors have been on the job as news director for an average of 9.5 years, but with a median of 5, it's clear that some long time news directors are bringing up the average.  I again found multiple news directors who had been in that position for 38 to 40 years (which was the longest).

Longevity increased as market size fell; commercial station news directors had been at their stations for much longer than news directors at non-commercial stations; news directors in the West had been at their stations noticeably longer than others.    And their experience wasn't just at that station.  The average radio news director had been a news director somewhere for 13.3 years; the median was 10. Both of those numbers are up from a year ago.

A high percentage of radio news directors reported that their primary station responsibility was NOT news: 38.3% overall.  Here, commercial stations were much higher than non-commercial ones, with 41.4% of news directors at commercial stations saying their primary station responsibility was not news versus 27.3% of non-commercial news directors.  The number was especially high for stations with a news staff of one.  There, almost half (48.7%) of news directors said their primary responsibility was not news.  That was the same percentage (although not the same people) for the smallest market size (less than 50,000 people).