Popular Radio Shows in The United States
Talkers Magazine compiles Arbitron's data, along with other sources, to estimate the minimum weekly audiences of various commercial long-form talk radio shows. NPR and APM compile Arbitron's data for its public radio shows and releases analysis through press releases.
| Program | Format | Daypart | Weekly Listeners in Millions |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Rush Limbaugh Show | Conservative talk | Midday | 14+ |
| The Sean Hannity Show | Conservative talk | East Coast PM Drive | 13.25+ |
| Morning Edition | Public news | AM Drive | 12.3 |
| All Things Considered | Public news/talk | PM Drive | 11.8 |
| Marketplace | Public news | PM Drive | 9+ |
| Delilah | Adult contemporary | Evenings | 8+ |
| The Dave Ramsey Show | Financial talk | Midday | 7.75+ |
| Glenn Beck Program | Conservative talk | West Coast AM Drive | 7.5+ |
| The Mark Levin Show | Conservative talk | West Coast PM Drive | 7.5+ |
| Fresh Air | Public news/talk | Midday | 4.5 |
| A Prairie Home Companion | Public old-time radio | Weekends | 4+ |
| Coast to Coast AM | Paranormal talk | Overnights | 3.5+ |
| Talk of the Nation | Public talk | Midday | 3.2 |
| Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! | Public panel game show | Weekends | 3.2 |
| After MidNite with Blair Garner | Country music | Overnights | 2.7 |
| The Lia Show | Country music | Evenings | 2+ |
Note on dayparts: because of the effects of time on North American broadcasting, nationally syndicated shows that air live will end up on different dayparts in different time zones. The above list makes note of this. Note that although shows such as Beck's and Levin's are listed under "West Coast" drive times, that their shows are based on the East Coast (and thus air in early midday and early evening time slots there). Their dayparts are indicated as such for the purposes of clarity and consistency.
The list is heavily skewed toward conservative talk radio and public radio due to the greater availability of data for those formats; other formats, particularly those for music, are not measured in as much detail, in part due to irregularities in scheduling.
Sirius XM Radio was monitored directly by Arbitron from 2007 to early 2008. The latest numbers available, from early 2008 (prior to when XM and Sirius merged), have The Howard Stern Show being the most listened-to show on either platform, with Stern's Howard 100 channel netting a "cume" of 1.2 million listeners and Howard 101 (the secondary and replay channel) netting an additional 500,000 listeners. Eastlan Ratings, a service that competes with Arbitron in several markets, includes satellite radio channels in its local ratings; Howard 100 has registered above several lower-end local stations in the markets Eastlan serves, the only satellite station to do so.
The highest rated local talk program in the United States is John and Ken in Los Angeles. Talkers estimates their audience at 1 million listeners.
Because of the large advantage the English language has in the United States, virtually all of the most-listened-to radio programs in the United States are in English. The only other language with an audience large enough to establish national networks is Spanish, and data for shows in that language are much more limited. Other languages (Chinese, Korean, various languages of India, and French) are broadcast only on a local level and thus would be unable to achieve the reach necessary to appear on these lists.
Read more about this topic: List Of Most-listened-to Radio Programs
Famous quotes containing the words united states, popular, radio, shows, united and/or states:
“It is a curious thing to be a woman in the Caribbean after you have been a woman in these United States.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal bonds—we do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.”
—Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)
“Now they can do the radio in so many languages that nobody any longer dreams of a single language, and there should not any longer be dreams of conquest because the globe is all one, anybody can hear everything and everybody can hear the same thing, so what is the use of conquering.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort is able to develop only trade-union consciousness.”
—Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870–1924)
“An alliance is like a chain. It is not made stronger by adding weak links to it. A great power like the United States gains no advantage and it loses prestige by offering, indeed peddling, its alliances to all and sundry. An alliance should be hard diplomatic currency, valuable and hard to get, and not inflationary paper from the mimeograph machine in the State Department.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“My opinion is that the Northern states will manage somehow to muddle through.”
—John Bright (1811–1889)