Laid off from iHeartMedia.

What iHeartMedia layoffs have meant for employees

If you work at iHeartMedia, job cuts have sat inside the company's savings programs since 2024. The 2024 initiatives behind its 2025 savings included headcount reductions, and the initiatives it added late in 2025 were primarily headcount reductions, as iHeartMedia set out in its 2025 annual report with a savings figure for each. Those targets appeared in the annual report and in results releases such as the first-quarter 2026 results, and if you're still on staff, you could watch the company's later filings and releases for updates to them.

The company has also said, in its own words, what kind of change these cuts are. Its 2020 restructuring, Music Business Worldwide reported, set up what it called AI-enabled Centers of Excellence to "consolidate functional areas of expertise in specific locations," and its leaders called the job losses "the unfortunate price we pay to modernize the company." The June 2026 memo, as Radio Online quoted it, spoke of "structural changes within our Programming organization" and expanded responsibilities for key leaders. Both describe a reorganization decided at the top and applied across markets. If the layoff comes up in interviews, that wording is something you can point to when explaining a layoff, since it's the company's own description of a structural change.

Restructuring expenses, as the annual report defines them, are primarily severance tied to cost-saving initiatives. Where a package is on offer, keeping its written terms and the date they reached you lets you compare notes with colleagues cut in the same round. Benefits have moved too. The Writers Guild of America East said in 2024 that the company had cut the 401(k) match for non-union employees while its podcast unit's first contract kept the match, and a company match appears among the benefits in the 2025 annual report, with eligibility varying by full-time and union status. If you had a 401(k) through iHeartMedia and your statements show a stretch without a match, that gap is worth counting when you size what you're leaving with.

Union coverage at iHeartMedia is narrow, but where a contract exists it has set its own terms. The 100-member podcast unit's 2024 contract also gave the union a right to bargain over any use of artificial intelligence in the workplace, a notable term at a company that ties its restructuring to technology. If you're in a represented unit, your contract may carry severance and benefit terms that apply to that unit alone.

Layoffs haven't been the only lever. In April 2020 the company's leaders wrote that their pay measures aimed at "keeping our business healthy while still avoiding permanent layoffs," in the memo Robert Feder published, and it put the two unpaid weeks at about a 4% salary cut for the year. If you're asked to take unpaid time or a pay cut, that memo shows how the company itself explained such steps, though only for 2020.

The company keeps its headquarters, executive offices and a data and administrative service center in San Antonio and some executive operations in New York, by the annual report's account. If your job was based at headquarters, the state's rules sit at Texas unemployment benefits; for the New York offices, at New York unemployment benefits; and for a station or office in California, at California unemployment benefits, with the state's layoff notices gathered at California layoffs. Premiere Networks, the syndication business, and Total Traffic and Weather Network sit inside the company's Multiplatform Group by the same report's account, so a layoff at either one is an iHeartMedia layoff.

A sourced history of iHeartMedia layoffs

• June 2026, programming restructuring and on-air exits

  Multiplatform Group CEO Ann Marie Licata and programming chief Tom Poleman said existing positions would be eliminated as new roles were created, Radio Online reported, and industry reports named programmers, market executives and air personalities among the exits from Anchorage to Pittsburgh.

• October 2025, cuts across major markets before earnings

  Hosts, programmers, executives and production staff lost jobs in several major markets just ahead of the third-quarter earnings report, Digital Music News reported, among them Salt Lake City market president Joyce Wirthlin.

• November 2024, layoffs in election week

  iHeartMedia, Digital Music News reported, began election-week layoffs that it put at "less than 5%" of a workforce of more than 10,000.

• April 2020, furloughs and two weeks of unpaid vacation

  Weeks after 90-day furloughs for hundreds of staff, a memo Robert Feder published required employees making over $50,000 in base compensation to take two weeks of unpaid vacation in 2020 unless they had already volunteered for a pay cut of 5% or more.

• January 2020, restructuring around AI-enabled centers

  At least 57 named employees, mainly on-air talent, lost jobs in an All Access tally that Music Business Worldwide cited. The company described the number of job shifts as relatively small against an employee base of 12,500, and a memo cited enhanced severance and outplacement help.

• January 2017, Aliso Viejo ad software office closing

  iHeartMedia Revenue Platforms, an ad software unit, planned to cut 72 jobs by April 4 and move its Aliso Viejo operations to Texas, according to the Orange County Business Journal and a state notice in our WARN tracker.

What to do if you're laid off from iHeartMedia

• File for unemployment in the state where you worked. Benefits run from your filing date, and severance usually doesn't block you. iHeartMedia's biggest hubs: California. Somewhere else? Every state is here.
• Apply for financial and hardship assistance. Unemployment supplements income, but food benefits, health coverage and utility help are often available as well. Here's some of what iHeartMedia's hub states run: California, and every other state is here.
• Mind the health insurance window. Losing coverage opens a 60-day special enrollment period, and an ACA plan usually beats unsubsidized COBRA. Compare your options before the employer coverage lapses, and read how the COBRA clocks run if you are weighing it seriously.
• Get your real runway number. Severance plus savings divided by reality. The calculator takes five minutes.
• Know which clocks are already running. Severance review windows, COBRA election, visa grace periods, and 401(k) rollovers all run on federal deadlines that started at termination. All five deadlines are here.