Salem Media

Who Owns Conservative Talk Radio in 2026 — and How AI Engines Are Reshaping the Audience

Conservative talk radio reaches roughly 50 million weekly listeners across iHeartMedia, Cumulus, and Salem. The format now competes for Citation Share inside ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews — the layer that mediates how non-listeners learn about the category.