Monday, August 12, 2019

Which radio stations are people in Boise listening to?





























On Friday, August 9, 2019 the Scene entertainment guide at the Idaho Statesman had an article by Michael Deeds titled Not again, Boise! Your favorite radio station is on AM. A bar chart with the 23 stations he listed from the Spring 2019 Nielsen Audio ratings is shown above. Michael noted that those rating shares are a logjam - no one station comes close to dominating. An AM news-talk station, KBOI 670, (50 kw) had the biggest, 5.4, share. It was followed by a three-way tie at a 4.5 share by FM stations: KSRV (variety hits, “Bob FM”), KQBL (country, “The Bull”) and KKGL (classic rock, “The Eagle”). The Facebook page for KSRV has the slogan We Play Anything – a non-format. Presumably that makes up for not having the usual nickname based on their call letters. The public radio and NPR news-talk station KBSX tied for fifth place – better than I would have expected. Another less powerful AM news-talk station, KIDO 580 (5kw) only tied for ninth place with the classical music FM station KBSU (Boise State University).

















I added up the shares for the six top formats based on a word or two, and listed them in another bar chart. They were Country (12.8), Hits (12.5), Rock (12.4), News-talk (12.0), Adult contemporary (9.7), and Contemporary hits (8.0). Wikipedia has a web page on Adult Contemporary (AC) Music which says there are subtypes of hot, modern, smooth, soft, rhythmic,  and urban. The Wikipedia web page on Country Music says some subtypes are alt, bro, neotraditionalist, outlaw, and truck-driving. Mr. Deeds didn’t bother with that.

I have a dozen FM stations on car radio buttons and my iPod. They include those three AC stations. I have both AM news-talk stations on my car radio, and the FM one. But I have none of those four country stations. Also, I ignore one AC station (KXLT) between Thanksgiving and Christmas because then they only play Christmas music.  

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