The Dashboard Is Changing. Is Your Digital Strategy?

When I got into radio in 1988, nobody questioned whether the station would be available in the car. It was simply assumed. The only question was whether listeners would choose you over the station across town because the dashboard belonged to radio. Today, we have to ask a different question: Will the next generation of drivers even have a radio?

That may sound like an extreme question, but it’s no longer hypothetical. Over the past few years, we’ve watched several automakers rethink the role of traditional radio in their vehicles. Ford made headlines when it announced plans to remove AM from many of its electric vehicles before eventually reversing course after pressure from broadcasters, lawmakers, and emergency management officials. More recently, the new automaker Slate announced that its trucks won’t include a traditional AM/FM radio at all, instead expecting drivers to bring their own entertainment through their smartphones and connected devices.

Whether Slate succeeds or whether other manufacturers follow the same path isn’t the point. The point is that we’re watching the beginning of a shift in how people consume audio in their vehicles. For decades, the dashboard guaranteed radio a seat in the car. Today, that seat is no longer guaranteed, and tomorrow it may have to be earned in entirely different ways.

I think that’s why stations need to stop looking at streaming as simply another feature they offer. For years, streaming has often been treated as an extension of the broadcast signal. It’s something that’s available if someone happens to visit the website or download the app, but it rarely becomes part of a station’s overall strategy. If the dashboard continues moving toward apps and connected devices instead of traditional receivers, that thinking needs to change.

A listener who buys a vehicle without a traditional radio isn’t going to spend time searching through frequencies that no longer exist. They’re going to reach for the same thing they use everywhere else in their life. They’ll open an app, ask their phone to play something, search Google, ask ChatGPT or another AI assistant how to listen, or click a link someone shared on social media. Every one of those experiences begins with your digital presence, not your transmitter.

That’s why I believe your website has become more important than ever. It isn’t simply a place to post contests, news stories, and community events. It’s the hub that supports almost everything else your station does online. Your stream lives there. Your mobile app depends on it. Search engines index it. AI platforms learn from it. Social media points back to it. When someone wants to know more about your station, your website is almost always where that journey begins.

The same goes for your mobile app. If your strategy is simply to have an app because every station is expected to have one, you’re probably missing the bigger opportunity. Your app may become the new preset button. Instead of asking listeners to remember 98.5 FM, you may be asking them to keep your app on the first page of their phone or in the infotainment system of their next vehicle. That’s a very different marketing challenge than we’ve faced over the past fifty years.

The encouraging news is that radio still has something most streaming services can’t replicate. We have local personalities who know the community. We cover local high school sports, weather, charity events, breaking news, and businesses that national platforms have never heard of. Those things matter, and I don’t think they’re going away anytime soon. If anything, local content becomes even more valuable as generic streaming services continue to grow.

The challenge is making sure listeners can still find us. Great local programming doesn’t help if someone has no idea how to listen in the first place. That’s why I think every station should spend time evaluating its digital strategy. Is your stream easy to find? Does your website immediately tell visitors how to listen? Does your mobile app provide an experience people actually want to use? When someone searches for your station online, are you making it obvious that you’re available wherever they happen to be?

None of us knows exactly what the dashboard will look like ten years from now. Traditional radio will almost certainly remain part of many vehicles for years to come, and broadcasters will continue fighting to preserve that presence wherever possible. At the same time, I don’t think it’s wise to build our digital strategy around the hope that every automaker continues doing what they’ve always done.

The stations that thrive over the next decade will probably be the ones that stop thinking of streaming as a backup plan and start treating it as a core part of their business. Your broadcast signal will always be important, but it may no longer be the primary way future listeners discover your station. As the dashboard evolves, our digital strategy has to evolve with it, because being easy to find may become just as important as being great to listen to.