College Radio Creeps into New Arbitron PPM Ratings

Jose Fritz always unearths some amazing gems about radio on his Arcane Radio Trivia blog. Although he rarely writes about current news, yesterday he turned his attention to college radio ratings that he culled from Arbitron reports that use the portable people meter (PPM).

Now, the last time that I looked at Arbitron radio ratings I found that college radio rarely showed up in the listings, so I was very interested to hear that Jose found some stations who defied the norm.

With these new PPM-based ratings, Jose uncovered a number of college stations that managed to make their way into the listings. The first surprise that he found was that in Boston, Emerson College station WERS ranked higher (.9 share of listeners) than commercial rock station WFNX (.8 share of listeners).

Take a look at Jose's entire post to see ratings for some other college stations around the country. By the way, a few of the big buzz college stations also made the rankings, including Seattle's KEXP with .7 share and L.A.'s KCRW (.9 share). Jose postulates about the ratings, saying, "...perhaps this is real and can set a new bar for non-commercial stations. Maybe they can compete on their own terms."

By the way, Jose Fritz is one of the folks who I've profiled on Radio Survivor for our "Radio Obsessives" series. If you have suggestions for others who I should profile, let me know in the comments.