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A radio personality (also known as a radio host or a radio presenter) is a person with an on-air position in radio broadcasting. A radio personality can be someone who introduces and discusses various genres of music, hosts a talk show that may take calls from listeners, or someone whose primary responsibility is to give news, weather, sports or traffic information. Professional radio personalities don't usually stay at one station for their entire career; instead, they move up and on to stations within their broadcast area or those out of town.
Being a radio personality is the second occupation that frequently relocates, trailing behind the military personnel. This is because radio stations sometimes change formats and often lay off personnel prior to change, and frequently radio stations give contract offers to radio on-air personalities on other stations. For talk radio hosts, and many other kinds of radio personality, the highest achievement in radio is national syndication.
Radio personalities usually become better known in a community than personalities of other media outlets. Dan O'Day, who coined the phrase, "Personality Radio", attributes this to the intimacy of the medium. "At its best, radio is simply one person whispering into the ear of another person." More radio personalities are sought to make personal appearances at local functions and commercial venues than those from other media, according to Ad Age Magazine.
Sometimes frequent callers to talk radio programs become radio personalities by default due to multiple exposure to a specific audience. Some of those callers known in the industry as "chronics", such as Lionel, are so good that station management offers them their own show.
In the 1990s, with the rise of talk-oriented radio personalities like Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh, successful radio stations began to focus less on the musical expertise of their hosts and more on the individual hosts' personalities. Since the term disk jockey has also become commonly used to refer to a club DJ, the term "radio personality" has become more appropriate for hosts of radio shows.
See also
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