Radio Market Size

[Radiofan101]

Alright, there's about 282 some-odd radio markets out there.

Which Radio Markets are labeled as Major?

Which ones as large?

Which ones as medium?

And which ones as small?

 

[Bongwater]

If you scroll down the discussion boards button (the upper right, where it says Jump to =>), you'll see a listing of stations. TOP 20 Markets are listed - in order. They're the major markets. The next ones down are the medium markets. The smaller ones you can find in the States category.

The Ratings button also lists them. But that's provided if they are even ranked by Arbitron. There's quite a number that aren't.......

 

[davideduardo]

Alright, there's about 282 some-odd radio markets out there.

Which Radio Markets are labeled as Major?

Which ones as large?

Which ones as medium?

And which ones as small?

The only "standard" is "rated markets" vs. non-rated ones.

Some people think a major market and a large market are the same. A major market might be top 10 (nearly 30% of all radio revenues are in those 10 markets). Others think all PPM markets are large / major. Or the top 100 markets.

Medium might be just about anything. Small might be those under 250,000 people, including all unrated markets.

The most logical approach I've seen is calling any market with 1% or over of the US population a large market. That means about 15 markets. Medium would be the markets with over 0.1 percent, or rated markets 16 to 150. Everything else is a small market.

The top 25 markets contain just under 40% of the entire US 12+ population. The top 50 markets have just about half of it. The sum of the New York and LA radio metro population is about the same as the population of all the markets from 50 to 100 combined. The NY metro is close to 100 times larger than market 200.

(I didn't know any of this relative population stuff until you asked the question... it was fun finding out, too)