As mentioned in the article, a large proportion of radio listening is done while driving. A car travelling at highway speeds has 60-70dB of background noise. Dynamic range compression prevents the station from becoming inaudibly quiet or uncomfortably loud in such a noisy environment.

BBC Radio 3 (a national classical music station in the UK) uses heavy dynamic range compression during the drivetime peak, but far less compression during the day. This compromise provides a better experience for both hi-fi and in-car listeners.

Very heavy dynamic range compression was historically useful for AM broadcasters, because it maximised signal strength.

Don't conflate compression in general with the aggressive mastering-phase compression of the loudness wars. Some degree of compression is essential to pretty much any type of audio engineering. Tasteful use of compression is a real art and is an integral part of some of the best studio albums in any genre (except perhaps classical). Compression is essential for vocals except for people who somehow never move their head ever while talking or singing. Compression also makes drums sound amazing--hard, big boomy, Led Zeppelin-style drums don't just naturally sound that way, thats a compressor working its magic.

Mostly because you can get it louder, and usually louder can trick you into thinking it sounds clearer or "better". Plus there's the history with the whole loudness wars.

Mozart requires running the audio through compression multiple times. Without that, half of it is inaudible and you'll be constantly adjusting the volume knob.

(at least with modern performances -- perhaps Mozart intended differently, and is now spinning in his grave due to excessive dynamics)

It helps when you're listening in a noisy environment and the audio has large dynamic range.

One of the linked articles at the bottom of the original (at least for me) was about the relatively huge differences in levels between different shows, which noted that even a 6 DB change causes people to reach for the volume and higher levels end up with many turning the radio off.

A radio that's off has no listeners.

You're probably confusing audio compression with data compression.

These days every note of music you listen to on every modern album has a compressor in it somewhere, even if you don't think you can hear it, it's there.

I'm fairly certain he is speaking of data compression in the article, rather than dynamic volume compression.

The problem with sending compressed signals is that they will probably be recompressed before making it to someone's ear and the chain of codecs may introduce strange artifacts.