TL;DR: A radio interview costs nothing if you earn it and between $5,000 and $200,000 if you buy it, and for most businesses the honest answer is that neither is a good use of money in 2026. Earned interviews are pitched and free apart from staff or agency time, which sits inside retainers that typically start around $3,500 to $10,000 a month. Paid bookings are flat project fees: a Radio Media Tour of 10 to 15 interviews runs $5,000 to $8,000, a 20 to 30 interview tour in major markets runs $12,000 to $18,000, and a national Satellite Media Tour runs $25,000 to $50,000, climbing past $75,000 with a celebrity spokesperson. An Audio News Release costs roughly $500 to produce and under $10,000 to produce and distribute widely. Radio still reaches 87% of US adults weekly per Nielsen’s Audio Today 2026 report, which is a genuinely large number. What it does not do reliably is convert, and it does almost nothing for the AI search visibility most buyers are actually trying to build.
That is the uncomfortable part, and it is the part the vendors selling media tours will not put in a proposal. Here is the full breakdown, including the cases where the answer flips to yes.
What are the actual 2026 price bands?
Five bands, from free to six figures.
Tier 0: Earned interviews, $0 plus time
You or your publicist pitches a producer, the producer books you, nobody pays anybody. This is how most credible radio appearances happen. The cost is labor. A PR agency doing radio pitching bills it inside a general retainer, which industry pricing surveys put at roughly $3,500 to $10,000 a month and up depending on scope. No reputable agency guarantees earned placements, and one that does is either buying them or lying.
Tier 1: Audio News Release, $500 to $10,000
An ANR is a produced audio segment, typically 60 seconds, distributed to stations that can air it as-is. Studio production alone runs around $500. Full production plus wide distribution to hundreds of stations comes in under $10,000 from most vendors. PR Newswire’s 2026 rate card lists multimedia item add-ons at $325 per item for releases already going out over the wire.
An ANR is advertising that sounds like news. Stations that air it usually disclose it, listeners usually ignore it, and it does not produce a link or a transcript, which matters for reasons covered below.
Tier 2: Radio Media Tour, $5,000 to $25,000
An RMT books you into back-to-back interviews, typically in 10 minute windows, up to six an hour. Standard tours of 10 to 15 interviews start at $5,000 to $8,000. Larger tours of 20 to 30 interviews in major markets run $12,000 to $18,000. Extensive national campaigns pass $25,000. Total spokesperson time is usually three to four hours.
A spokesperson fee sits on top if you are hiring one, commonly $5,000 to $15,000 and well beyond for a recognizable name.
Tier 3: Satellite Media Tour, $10,000 to $50,000
An SMT is the video equivalent, usually broadcast and streamed, often bundled with radio. Regional SMTs run $10,000 to $15,000. National SMTs hitting major markets run $25,000 to $50,000. A single-market nationwide uplink alone costs $20,000 to $30,000.
Tier 4: Premium national campaign, $75,000 to $200,000 and up
Celebrity spokesperson, multi-day, national broadcast plus digital. This is a product launch budget, not a visibility budget.
Want to see whether AI assistants currently name your company when someone asks who the experts are in your field? Get your free AI visibility audit before you spend anything on media.
Who are the actual vendors?
The market is smaller than it looks and the names repeat.
On the production and booking side, D S Simon Media, MultiVu (PR Newswire’s multimedia arm), News Direct, KEF Media and Strauss Media Strategies are the established players for SMT and RMT work. All five are currently operating and all five will quote a flat project fee rather than a per-placement price. Scope differences between them are real but narrow: the variables are market list quality, spokesperson coaching, guaranteed minimum bookings, and whether video is bundled.
On the distribution and network side, Westwood One, iHeartMedia, Audacy and Cumulus Media control large station groups. NPR and SiriusXM operate separately and are earned-only for editorial programming. You do not typically buy an interview from these networks directly. The tour vendors book into their affiliates.
One correction worth making because it appears in stale vendor lists: Podcastle, frequently recommended as production tooling, rebranded to Async in February 2026. If a proposal cites it by the old name, the proposal is old.
Compare on three things when you get quotes. Guaranteed minimum number of confirmed bookings, not “pitched.” Market tier composition, meaning how many of the confirmed stations are in the top 50 markets. And whether you receive recordings and transcripts, which is the only asset with a life after the tour day.
Does radio still have the reach to justify it?
Yes, and that is not the problem.
Nielsen’s Audio Today 2026 report puts AM/FM radio weekly reach at 87% of US adults, with 81% weekly reach among adults 18 to 34, higher than any other measured platform for that age group. Monthly reach hits 93% of US adults, ahead of smartphones at 89%, TV at 84% and PCs at 76%. Reach among Hispanic adults runs 94% monthly and 93% among Black adults.
Those are real numbers and they are better than most digital channels can claim. The issue is not whether people are listening. The issue is what happens after they listen.
Radio is an ephemeral, low-attribution medium. There is no click. There is rarely a durable URL. A 10 minute interview at 7:40am reaches an audience that is driving, and the measurable action available to them is remembering your name until they are somewhere they can type it. Some do. Most do not.
That is survivable if radio is one part of a mix where something else captures the demand. It is not survivable as a standalone spend, and RMT proposals are almost always sold as standalone spends.
What does a radio interview do for AI search visibility?
Almost nothing on its own, and this is the part that has changed most since 2023.
AI engines cannot listen. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews read text. A radio interview that exists only as broadcast audio is invisible to every one of them. What gets read is the text around it: the station’s episode page, the show notes, the transcript if one is published, and any article the station writes off the segment.
That reframes the buying decision entirely. The question to ask a tour vendor is not how many stations, it is how many of those stations publish a permanent episode page with a transcript and a link. Most terrestrial radio affiliates do not. Podcast-format and digital-first audio properties usually do, which is why podcast guesting has quietly become the better buy for visibility purposes. We covered those ranges in how much does a podcast tour cost.
There is circulating commentary claiming Perplexity and Gemini cite podcast transcripts at higher rates than ChatGPT does, and that episodes featuring named experts making quotable claims get cited more often than conversational co-host shows. The underlying sources are small independent blog studies rather than platform or Nielsen research, so treat the direction as plausible and the specific numbers as unproven.
The reliable principle underneath it is not in dispute: text that names you, is permanently hosted, and can be quoted is the asset. Audio that disappears at 7:50am is not. Our post on whether press placements help AI search covers the broader mechanism.
When is paid radio actually the right call?
Three situations, and they are narrower than the category suggests.
You have a dated news hook and a national consumer product. Seasonal launches, recall responses, holiday retail, anything where broad simultaneous awareness in a compressed window is the actual goal. This is what SMTs and RMTs were designed for and they do it well.
You are selling to an audience that is genuinely radio-heavy. Trades, drivers, agricultural markets, regional services. The 87% weekly reach figure is a national average and it is much higher than that in some segments.
You need broadcast credibility for a specific downstream use. Investor materials, a speaking bureau profile, a bio that needs national broadcast credits. Here the interview is the artifact, not the audience.
Outside those three, the same budget spent on earned editorial coverage that produces permanent, linkable, transcribed text will almost always outperform on both lead generation and AI visibility. If your goal is being the name recommended when someone asks a machine who to hire, earned placement in publications the engines actually read is the more direct path.
Radio reaches 87% of adults weekly and none of them can click. Find out where your company already shows up in AI answers with a free visibility audit, then decide where the budget goes.
FAQ
Is a radio interview ever free? Yes, and most credible ones are. Earned interviews are pitched to producers and cost nothing beyond the time spent pitching, which is either yours or your agency’s. PR retainers covering this work typically start around $3,500 to $10,000 a month for general scope. Paid bookings through a Radio Media Tour or Satellite Media Tour are a separate product entirely, sold as flat project fees from $5,000 to $200,000 depending on scale and spokesperson.
What is the difference between an SMT and an RMT? A Satellite Media Tour is video, distributed to broadcast and streaming outlets, and costs $10,000 to $50,000 for regional to national scope. A Radio Media Tour is audio only, books 10 to 30 back-to-back interviews in roughly 10 minute windows, and costs $5,000 to $25,000. RMTs require three to four hours of spokesperson time on tour day. Many vendors bundle both, which is where quotes in the $30,000 to $60,000 range usually come from.
How many interviews should a radio tour guarantee? Ask for confirmed bookings, not pitches, and get the number in writing. A standard tour at $5,000 to $8,000 should confirm 10 to 15. A $12,000 to $18,000 tour should confirm 20 to 30 with a meaningful share in top 50 markets. Vendors who quote “up to” a number without a guaranteed floor are pricing the optimistic case. Also ask how many of the confirmed stations publish a permanent episode page, because that determines whether anything survives the day.
Do radio interviews help you get cited by ChatGPT or Perplexity? Not directly. AI engines read text, not audio, so an interview that exists only as broadcast has no retrievable surface. What helps is the text around it: a published transcript, a permanent episode page, show notes naming you, or an article the outlet writes off the segment. Before buying a tour, ask which stations produce any of those. Most terrestrial affiliates do not, which is why podcast and digital audio placements generally outperform broadcast radio for AI visibility purposes.
Is an Audio News Release worth $10,000? Rarely, for most businesses. An ANR is a produced 60 second segment distributed for stations to air as-is, costing roughly $500 to produce and under $10,000 for production plus wide distribution. It is advertising in news format, it is typically disclosed as such, and it produces no link, no transcript and no editorial credibility. It works for broad consumer awareness on a dated hook. It does nothing for search, AI visibility, or a credibility-driven sales process.
What should I spend instead if my goal is being recommended by AI assistants? Earned editorial coverage in publications with permanent, indexed, text-based articles, plus structured content on your own site that answers buyer questions directly. The mechanism is simple: AI engines quote text they can retrieve and name entities they can verify. A broadcast segment fails both tests. A bylined article or a quoted expert feature that stays online for years passes both, and it usually costs less than a national media tour.
The takeaway
Radio’s reach numbers are the best they have been in years and its marketing value for most businesses is the worst it has been in years, and both of those things are true at the same time. Nielsen says 87% of adults hear AM/FM weekly. Nothing in that statistic tells you whether any of them will act, and the medium gives them no mechanism to do so in the moment. If you have a dated national hook, a radio-heavy audience, or a specific need for broadcast credits, a $5,000 to $18,000 Radio Media Tour is a defensible line item and the vendor list is short and legitimate. If what you actually want is to be the name that comes up when a buyer asks a question, spend the money where the answer gets written down, because a machine cannot quote something it never heard.
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