Ever wonder which radio station in Texarkana has the most listeners? We are planning to do a series on local radio stations focusing on the good, bad, and ugly of broadcast radio. We start our series off by sharing recent official “ratings”.
Keep in mind, radio is not what it used to be. With MP3’s, Satellite Radio, Podcasts, and even YouTube playlists, entertainment lovers have a lot more options for music, sports, talk radio, etc…
A couple of things to point out…
First, there are a couple of different big firms that do radio ratings. Nielsen, once called Arbitron, sends out diaries that listeners fill out and mail in with information of their listening habits. Second, Eastlan Ratings uses telephone contact to determine listening habits. This is important, because there are two large radio companies in Texarkana that are owned and operated from other states. Together these companies own 5 radio stations each. When you start dealing in ratings data it can be easily manipulated. Townsquare Media, programs their radio stations from New York City uses Eastlan Ratings, because that is where they get better results. Texarkana Radio out of Alaska uses Nielsen ratings, again that is where results are skewed more in favor of their stations. The smaller radio groups and stations in the middle pretty much fall in between and depend on good old fashioned community involvement to drive their listnership and do not pay for ratings and fall back on their results to advertisers, which I think means they work harder. So, keep in mind that some stations that are popular with the community may not even show up on ratings purchased by larger companies. The results below are are for the “12+ demographic”.
In the series we will explain voice-tracking, where on most of the bigger stations, the DJ is in another state and has recorded their radio show in advance. Voice Trackers can be hired for a fraction of the cost of having a local person in the studio for hours at a time. Satellite programming that is delivered live from out of state, and the few smaller stations that have more live radio personalities than the bigger companies. We will also discuss the concept of “Collective Contesting” on both a local and national level and why on some of the most popular radio stations winning a contest is near impossible for a listener from Texarkana.
We start off with Ratings. Townsquare Media is the company out of New York and their stations are programmed and managed by people in New York City. They subscribe to Eastlan Ratings, here is how the Eastlan Results came out from Spring of 2016…
Screen cap via All Access
Texarkana Radio Center owned and operated out of Juneau Alaska subscribes to Nielsen Ratings, and you can see that the results are only for their radio stations…
Screen cap via All Access
For Texarkana, it is almost impossible to get a truly accurate rating with two different firms conducting surveys with different criteria, and subscribers only releasing the data that produces results for their properties. It sometimes comes down to trial and error for advertisers to see what station produces results. More so in the digital age.
What we can conclude, if not the exact rating share, is that between both methods we can determine the top stations in the Texarkana Market by comparison between both rating systems.
KKYR-FM (TSM) and KTOY-FM (TRC) are the top two stations, without argument. One is Townsquare Media, and the other Texarkana Radio Center. Filling out the rest of the top 5 would be KPWW-FM (TSM), KPGG-FM (AMI), and finishing out the top 5 would be KKLT-FM with a contemporary Christian format.
Stay tuned!
