Ever been curious how the radio station you listen to does in the ratings? Radio & Records posts the ratings for every U.S. market on a continuing basis. The charts include the call letters (but not the frequency), the owner, the format and the rating for the past several quarters. Of course, NPR and other non-commercial stations aren’t included.
The rating shown by Radio & Records is — I think — the average number of people 12 or older who listened to a radio station for at least five minutes during one quarter hour at some point during the day. This is expressed as a percentage of the total possible audience for that market.
For example, KKOB-AM in Albuquerque received a 7.6 rating for Spring 2006. That means that — on the average — each day KKOB-AM had 49,719 listeners — 7.6% of the 654,200 individuals age 12 and older in Albuquerque. Of course, it could have been a different 49,719 each day, or 80,000 one day and 19,438 another day, or 40,000 in the morning and 9,719 the rest of the day, or 40,000 men and 9,719 women. Radio stations pay dearly for all that data and you won’t find it on the Internet.
There are some scary ratings. KABQ down from 2.4 in it’s first spring to 2.0 and not much above the Christian station. OF course KKOB has suffered losses to but it’s clearly the 800 lb gorilla that lots of people are listening to.