Last fall, an unexpected Crave renewal hit my credit card. When I called, I was told to suck it up and pay, no refund policy. I haven’t watched Crave in over a year, but I’ll be paying for it until October.

That was the moment I finally did the thing I had been avoiding for a long time: I opened my credit card statement and tallied up my subscriptions, line by line.

Spotify. Netflix. Crave. Amazon Prime (with Prime Video). Amazon Music Unlimited. Apple Music. Apple TV+. Audible. SiriusXM.

Some of those I used every day. Some I used once a month. And a couple of them, honestly, I had forgotten I was even paying for. Somewhere along the way, “just $12.99 a month” had multiplied into hundreds of dollars a year, quietly draining out of my account while I wasn’t looking.

If you have done this exercise yourself recently, you know the feeling. It’s a little embarrassing, a little infuriating, and very motivating.

Here’s roughly what that list adds up to at current Canadian prices:

More than eighteen hundred dollars a year. And the radio in my car? Zero. YouTube? Zero.

And the cycle never stops trying to pull you back in. As I was writing this very post, an email landed in my inbox: “Try 3 months free of Audiobooks+.” Three free months, then $13.99 a month, billed on top of my existing Premium subscription. I actually had that one once too. Signed up for the trial, forgot all about it, and paid for months before I noticed. That’s the whole model: the sneaky free trial we try and then forget to cancel, quietly converting into another line on the credit card statement.

The great downsizing

So I started unsubscribing. Not all at once, but steadily. I kept Netflix and Spotify, those are family favourites and they earn their place every month. But the rest? Caput. With the economy the way it is, every recurring charge had to earn its place, and most of them didn’t.

Here’s what surprised me, though. I expected to feel deprived. Instead, my habits just shifted, and in some ways they shifted backwards, in the best possible sense.

I went back to radio.

In the car, in the kitchen, while I work. The radio is free, it’s live, it’s local, and nobody emails me about a price increase. And most of what I actually watch these days is Netflix and YouTube documentaries anyway, one subscription the whole family uses and two platforms that cost nothing at all.

Two subscriptions we genuinely use, and a whole lot of free.

I’m not the only one

I kept wondering: is this just me? It turns out, not even close. The data across North America tells almost exactly my story.

Start with the cancelling. Deloitte found that U.S. cable and satellite TV penetration has fallen to 49%, down from 63% just three years earlier, while more than two-thirds of younger viewers now use free, ad-supported TV services instead. Premium streaming subscriber growth slowed to 7% in 2025, down from 12% the year before, according to Antenna data. The Reuters Institute found only 14% of Canadians pay for online news (20% in the U.S.), and describes willingness to pay as having hit a ceiling: the people willing to pay have already signed up, and everyone else is satisfied with free. MTM data show Canadian households actively streamlining their streaming subscriptions, just like I did.

Now the going-back-to-radio part. Radio Connects reports that live radio still accounts for the large majority of Canadian ad-supported audio time, roughly three out of every four hours in 2024 and 70% in 2025. Numeris puts weekly radio reach in measured Canadian markets at 81% of people 12 and older. In the U.S., radio held 62 to 67% of ad-supported audio time through 2024 and 2025, and Nielsen found more than 80% of in-car ad-supported listening still goes to radio. So that instinct to turn the dial back on in the car? That’s not nostalgia, that’s the continental norm.

And my YouTube habit fits the pattern too. Pew found YouTube is the most widely used online platform among U.S. adults, with 84% using it, and in 2025 social and video networks actually became Americans’ top news source at 54%, overtaking TV for the first time. Free, ad-supported platforms are picking up the time and attention that paid services are losing.

In other words, subscription fatigue is a measurable, continent-wide trend. Consumers under price pressure are choosing simple, free, habitual media. The two biggest winners are live radio and YouTube, which happen to be exactly the two places my own habits landed.

I didn’t go old school because I’m nostalgic. I went old school because it made financial sense, and millions of other people are quietly doing the same math.

What people are tuning back in to

Here’s the part of the research that surprised me most. It’s not just that people are coming back to free audio. It’s what they’re choosing when they get there.

The single clearest format growth story in North American radio is Christian music. Nielsen and Edison data identified Contemporary Christian as the fastest-growing U.S. radio format of the 2011 to 2021 decade, with a 49% positive share change. The momentum has continued, with its share among adults 25 to 54 rising from 3.1% in late 2024 to 3.7% by fall 2025. Religion was the single biggest station-count gainer in 2025, adding 61 stations, with Contemporary Christian among the next biggest. There are now more than 1,400 Contemporary Christian stations across the U.S.

It makes sense when you think about it. In a fragmented, fatigued media world, listeners are gravitating toward trusted, positive, low-friction media. Christian music radio sits right at that intersection: free, uplifting, family-safe, and there every time you turn the key.

Which brings me home. In Calgary, that format lives at 88.9 Shine FM, the city’s only full-time Contemporary Christian music station. While other formats compete with two or three stations playing nearly identical playlists, Shine FM Calgary has its lane to itself, and the fastest-growing format in North American radio behind it.

Why this matters if you own a business in Alberta

Here’s where my marketing brain kicks in, because I’m not just a listener. I own a business in Calgary too, and I think about where marketing dollars actually work every single day.

If audiences are cancelling subscriptions and spending more time with free media, then the smartest place for your message is exactly where that attention is landing. That’s the real case for radio advertising in Alberta right now. It’s not about radio versus digital. It’s about meeting people where they actually are, and increasingly, that’s live, local, free radio, with YouTube and other free platforms alongside it.

Stations like 88.9 Shine FM are a great example. Shine FM Calgary reaches a loyal, local audience that tunes in out of habit, not obligation. No password sharing, no churn, no cancellation email. Just listeners who show up every day because they want to, in their cars, their kitchens, and their workplaces. And as the numbers above show, they’re showing up to a format that’s growing, not fading.

For an advertiser, that kind of consistent, zero-friction attention is gold. Your message rides along with a daily routine instead of fighting for space in a crowded, paid, skippable feed.

The takeaway

My year of downsizing taught me something simple: when budgets tighten, people don’t stop consuming media. They just stop paying for it. They go back to what’s free, familiar, and trustworthy.

If your customers are doing what I did, and the data says they are, your marketing plan should follow them there.

Want to talk about what that looks like for your business? I’d love to help you figure out where radio fits in your mix.

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Jodi Morel is the Alberta Marketing Representative for Touch Canada Broadcasting (88.9 Shine FM Calgary) and founder of JodiMorel Media. She has spent more than 30 years helping Alberta businesses grow through radio and integrated digital marketing.