RTDNA, SU Issue Radio Newsroom Salary Report

RADIO ONLINE | Wednesday, June 7, 2023 | 3:27pm CT

RTDNA

For the third year in a row, radio salaries failed to rise to the level of inflation according to RTDNA and Syracuse University's Radio Salary Report. In 2021, although inflation that year was just 1.4%, radio salaries went up a paltry 0.9%. Last year was much worse, with radio salaries up just 0.4% and inflation at 7%. This year, salaries are up 4.5%, but with inflation at 6.4%, it's another year of losing ground. Over the last three years, radio news salaries are down a cumulative 8% in terms of real wages.

Major market newsrooms accounted for a dip in management salaries, and large markets increased or held steady across job titles. Mostly, salaries go up as market size goes up. RTDNA states that they also tend to go up as staff size increases, but much of that is a function of market size as well.

Overall, non-commercial salaries are substantially higher than commercial ones. But that's not a completely fair comparison as the vast majority of non-commercial stations in the survey are in large and major markets. So RTDNA compared commercial and non-commercial salaries only in the two largest market groups. It was still not a clean comparison, but there's no question that non-commercial salaries are higher than commercial salaries. Substantially higher.

Despite the difficulty in hiring, starting pay rose along with salaries generally -- though maybe not quite as dramatically as salaries in general. Median starting pay went up a substantial increase of 9.4%. Average starting pay rose just 3%.