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KQED San Francisco Is #1 Public News/Talk Station

G

Gregg.

KQED-FM is quite a public radio station. It's #1 overall in the San Francisco ratings and has the nation's highest cume for any News/Talk station, commercial or public, 751,600. In addition, you can add the cume from its Sacramento simulcast station, KQEI, 40,400 = 792,000.

Here's the list of the top public news/talk outlets with more than 300,000 weekly listeners.

1. KQED-FM San Francisco .............. 751,600 and KQEI Sacramento 40,400 = 792,000
2. WNYC-FM New York ..................... 687,600
3. WAMU Washington ....................... 619,700
4. KPCC Los Angeles .......................... 565,900 *
5. KNOW Minneapolis ...................... 428,200
6. KERA-FM Dallas .............................. 422,900
7. WBEZ Chicago ................................. 418,200
8. WBUR Boston .................................. 366,800 *
9. KUOW Seattle .................................. 336,600
10. WHYY-FM Philadelphia ............. 309,600

* We should note that KPCC competes with another NPR station in Los Angeles, KCRW which has a cume of 380,200.
And WBUR competes with another NPR station in Boston, WGBH-FM which has a cume of 291,200.
 
Geez, Craig, what did your father do to you to give you this fixation with listicles? :ROFLMAO: :ROFLMAO: :ROFLMAO:

As you correctly point out, KQEI in North Highlands/Sacramento does add an additional 40K-or-so of cume to the SFBA listenership, though it's still a distant also-ran behind KXJZ Capital Public Radio in that market. But KQED has a killer signal, 110 KW, which actually puts a serviceable signal into the western Sierra Nevada foothills, once you get a little elevation above the valley floor. In fact it's *so* powerful that there are locations (like my house!) where the signal is just too strong, and distorts from multipath off the Bay Area hills. The only other comparable FM is KIOI, the iHeart station that uses the branding "Star 101.3" (and used to be "K-101" back in the day.)

One reason KQED does so well here is that the Bay Area has an unusually high concentration of high IQ/highly educated tech workers, for whom commercial radio is a turn-off. And one other reason might be that the rest of the dial is deadly dull. There is literally nothing left to spend time listening to. Even all-news KCBS, the next best alternative, is a shadow of its former self.
 
The following are the number one stations in their respective markets:
KQED, San Francisco (Competes with KALW, public radio news/talk station)
WAMU, Washington (Produces 1A distributed by NPR)
KUOW, Seattle (Competes with KSWS public radio news/talk station)

The following are the top rated news/talk stations in their respective markets:
KERA, Dallas
WLRN, Miami
KJZZ, Phoenix
KNOW, St. Paul (Flagship of Minnesota Public Radio's News and Information Network, MPR owns and operates American Public Media, which produces Marketplace, and operates KPCC for Pasadena Community College, previously produced "A Prairie Home Companion").
 
Interestingly KQED-FM has to compete against another NPR News/talk affiliate it’s KALW-FM. But KALW-FM is more oriented towards San Francisco proper, Oakland and Berkeley type crowd while KQED-FM is Bay Area wide.

For KERA-FM I read that it’s in the top 10 most listened to station in the Dallas area. It partially debunks the argument that Texans don’t listen to Public media statement.
 
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