Who Owns Your Audience & Content Growth?

I was browsing industry news this week when something caught my attention. Cox Media Group announced a newly created executive position called Vice President of Audience & Content Growth. At first glance, it looked like another corporate job title, but the more I read about the position, the more I realized this isn’t just a new hire. It’s a glimpse into where radio is headed. The role isn’t centered around programming, promotions, digital, or sales. Instead, it’s responsible for growing audiences across broadcast, streaming, podcasting, social media, and whatever platform comes next. That’s a pretty significant shift in thinking, and it drives home the fact that we’re no longer just in the radio business.

Most stations reading this won’t create a position with that title, and frankly, they don’t need to. A small-market station isn’t going to hire another executive because a major market group did. But I do think every station needs someone who owns that responsibility, whether it’s the Program Director, Promotions Director, Operations Manager, a producer, or even the General Manager. The title doesn’t matter. The responsibility does.

For years we’ve thought of radio in departments. Programming creates the show. Promotions runs the contest. Digital posts to the website. Sales brings in advertisers. Engineering keeps everything on the air. Everyone has a job to do, and everyone stays busy. The audience doesn’t see departments.

Listeners experience one brand. They don’t care who updated the website, who scheduled the podcast, or who posted on Facebook. They simply know whether your station feels connected or disconnected. They hear a great interview on the morning show, visit your website an hour later, and can’t find anything about it. They hear you mention an upcoming event, but the details are buried three clicks deep. They subscribe to your podcast only to discover that every episode is simply titled with the date and nothing else.

Those little frustrations add up, but we’re too busy to consider them.

One thing I’ve said for years is that your website should be treated like a sister station. You wouldn’t randomly schedule songs, commercials, sweepers, and promotions and hope they somehow fit together. Everything on the air is planned with a purpose. The website deserves that same level of thought.

That’s where I think this new Audience & Content Growth mindset becomes so important.

Imagine your morning show interviews the local mayor about a major construction project. Most stations prepare for the interview, conduct it, thank the guest, and move on to the next break. By tomorrow morning, it’s forgotten except by the people who happened to be listening.

Now imagine someone asking a different question before the interview even begins.

“Where does this conversation live after the show is over?”

Suddenly, the interview becomes much more than a ten-minute segment. It becomes an article on your website that summarizes the important points. It becomes a podcast episode with meaningful show notes instead of simply “Morning Show – July 18.” It becomes a short video clip for social media that drives listeners back to the website. It becomes a page that people can still discover months from now when they search for information about that project or ask an AI assistant what’s happening in town.

The content didn’t change.

Its lifespan did.

That’s the biggest opportunity I see for radio today. Most stations think they have a lack-of-content problem, but they could not be more wrong. Radio stations create an incredible amount of original local content every single day. We interview coaches, mayors, nonprofit leaders, business owners, musicians, school administrators, police officers, and everyday people doing interesting things in our communities. We cover festivals, football games, weather emergencies, fundraisers, elections, concerts, and breaking news. Heck, even commercial content could be a reason for a story. Very few media outlets produce as much original local content as radio does.

Unfortunately, much of it disappears forever the moment the microphone turns off.

That’s becoming harder to justify because listeners don’t consume media the way they did even five years ago. They expect to hear something on the radio, then find it on your website. They expect to continue listening in a podcast. They expect to share it with a friend. They expect your app to help them pick up where they left off. Increasingly, they expect AI search tools to point them directly to your station when they’re looking for local answers.

That’s exactly what Cox Media Group recognized when it created this position. They’re no longer treating broadcast, streaming, podcasts, social media, and digital publishing as separate efforts. They’re treating them as one audience experience. The encouraging part is that you don’t need a major-market budget to think the same way.

Every station can begin asking one simple question during programming meetings.

“What happened on today’s show that’s still worth finding next week?”

Maybe it’s an interview. Maybe it’s a listener story. Maybe it’s a community event. Maybe it’s a local issue everyone is talking about. Whatever it is, someone should own the process of turning that moment into something that continues serving your audience after the broadcast ends.

That’s what Audience & Content Growth really means. It isn’t another department. It isn’t another meeting. It isn’t another person telling everyone else what to do. It’s simply making sure that the best things your station creates don’t disappear the moment they’re aired.

I have a feeling we’re going to see more positions like this appear throughout the radio industry over the next few years. As audiences continue moving between over-the-air radio, websites, apps, podcasts, streaming, social media, and AI-powered search, someone has to be responsible for making all of those pieces work together instead of independently.

Whether that responsibility belongs to a Vice President at a major market company or a Program Director wearing another hat in a small market isn’t really the point. The point is that someone has to own it.

Because today’s radio station isn’t just what comes out of the speakers anymore. It’s every place your audience encounters your brand, and every opportunity you have to keep serving them after the song, the interview, or the morning show is over.

If there’s one takeaway I’d leave you with, it’s this: the next time your air staff wraps up a great segment, don’t ask, “How did that sound?” Ask, “Where should listeners go now?” The answer to that question may do more to grow your audience than the segment itself.