Has it always been the policy of Nielsen Audio to NOT list non-subscribing stations? For example, Salem Media Group stations in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Louisville, Columbus. Prior to Nielsen purchase of Arbitron in 2013, didn’t Arbitron list all stations?
Well, yes and no. Arbitron’s publicly-released numbers prior to the sale to Nielsen Audio did include 12+ average quarter hour shares for all commercial stations, whether they subscribed or not. But not non-commercial stations weren’t listed.
Following its purchase of Arbitron, Nielsen stopped publicly releasing ratings data for non-subscribing stations. But it did start including data for subscribing non-commercial stations, which previously could only be obtained from the Radio Research Consortium.
Most of the major radio companies subscribe to ratings. However, there are some notable cases like Madison where shares for iHeartMedia and Audacy stations are publicly listed but Mid-West Family’s stations are not.
Meanwhile, the inclusion of non-commercial stations has revealed audience shares that had previously been invisible to many. In Minneapolis, there have been many books in recent years where Minnesota Public Radio’s KNOW and Northwestern Media’s KTIS-FM both ranked in the top five.
Sites including RadioInsight and All Access provide publicly-released data, including past books and ownership information.
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