WFUV SHINES IN THE MARCH PPM RATINGS • FLASHBACK TO NEW YORK IN FALL 2000

WFUV [link], Fordham University’s public radio station for over 50 years, keeps making news. 

According to the just-released Nielsen Audio PPM estimates for March, WFUV increased their weekly listeners by over 100,000 (29%) since the March 2017 book. 

WFUV’s estimated weekly listeners in the Long Island metro were also up – 14%.

WFUV’s coverage area is not as big as stations transmitting from the Empire State Building but it does have advantages.   As the map on the right shows, WFUV’s signal originates from the Bronx, several miles east of Manhattan.   

This gives WFUV a clear shot into some of the most populated areas of Nassau and Suffolk counties.  Plus online listeners can tune-in WFUV anywhere any time.

WNYC also did well in the March PPM ratings.   

Both the AM and FM were up compared to March 2017.  Classical WQXR stayed about the same.

Jazz WBGO is showing fewer weekly listeners in 2018 and 2017. 

EMF’s K-Love franchise, WKLV, leads Pillar of Fire’s Star 99.1 (WAWZ) in the city but WAWZ leads WKLV in the area thanks to a large listening base in New Jersey.

Two Nielsen metros are adjacent to the city: Long Island and Northern New Jersey, which includes Middlesex, Somerset and Union counties. 

In addition to WFUV’s success, WNYC-FM was also up a bit out on the Island.

WSUF and WSHU are in Fairfield, Connecticut, near Bridgeport.

In Northern New Jersey WNYC-FM has a lot of traffic.

There are many commuters to the city in these counties.

WQXR also doing well with suburbanites in Jersey,

WFUV does not put a signal into this metro.

This chart shows estimated weekly listeners in the three metros combined, the greater New York area.   

You can the see the ratings impact of WFUV's service to folks just east of the city.

WNYC-FM's 1,110,900 estimated weekly listeners is very impressive. Their game on the ground is strong.

 WFUV is now approaching half a million weekly listeners.

NEW: COMPARISON OF NONCOMMERCIAL & COMMERCIAL NEWS & TALK STATIONS

Because of the intense interest in where people are hearing news, we are debuting a new composite chart showing the estimated weekly listeners and Average Quarter Hour share (AQH) for public and commercial news and talk stations. (One note: We are not including commercial Sports stations in our analysis.)

WINS has been the top news station in New York for quite a few years. 

The format is “all news all of the time."  You hear updates, headlines, breaking news, traffic reports, the latest weather and sports scores are available at 10-10 WINS 24/7. WCBS-AM is an older, sleepier version of WINS.

WOR-AM is your grandfather’s talk station. Chris Christie hangs out at  WKXW-FM with other ditto-heads on Jersey 101.5.

WNYC-FM doesn’t have as many weekly listeners as the two big All News stations, but its AQH share indicates that WNYC-FM has more P1 listeners.

BLAST FROM THE PAST: NEW YORK NONCOM RADIO IN 2000

In Fall 2000, New York City was an Arbitron Diary market. At that time, Arbitron’s noncommercial radio distributor, the Radio Research Consortium (RRC), published top-line numbers for all measured noncom stations, regardless of whether a station subscribed.  For radio geeks like me, seeing the audience performance of smaller stations like WSOU was a big part of the fun.

Back then WNYC AM/FM was still shaking off its karma as voice of the city. At the time, WQXR was a commercial station owned by the New York Times.

WBGO had around the same number of estimated weekly listeners in 2000 as it had in March 2018. Triple A WFUV has doubled their number of weekly listeners.

WBAI actually had listeners back in Fall 2000.  They were raising plenty of money then and could pay for the lease for the transmitter. Ironically – now 18 years later – WBAI is abandoning the best transmission site in the nation.