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A radio personality is the modern incarnation of the disk jockey, or DJ and whose primary notariety comes from his or her work on radio. A radio personality can be someone who introduces and discusses various genres of music, hosts a talk program that may or may not take calls from listeners or someone whose primary responsibility is to give news, weather, sports or traffic information. Generally, career radio people seldom remain at one station but move up and on to stations within their broadcast area or those out of town.

Oddly, according to most experienced broadcasters, radio personalities become better known in a community than those of other media outlets. It's surmised that the intimacy created between the personality and the driver and passengers of a car impacts the listener in an unusual way, although no scientific studies are know to have been made on this subject. 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, 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.