There are ratings for radio program listenership (music and talk
formats).  Apparently, these ratings are regional, and there is a
large Company called Arbitron who is the dominant player in the world
of radio program ratings.  I would
like to find out if there is a web site that publishes these Arbitron
ratings for the Los Angeles Area (both AM and FM), other than
purchasing a full subscription from Arbitron which can be quite
costly...

Hi bwalsh999 ~

A search on Google for the term "Arbitron ratings - Los Angeles" (the
#2 market in the US), returns over 4000 listings. There were many
citations of the ratings, often specific to a type of station or a
particular station, and I was starting to think there was no online
listing. R&R, though, has the top 50 parkets published on its site
here:
   - http://www.radioandrecords.com/

Notice the links listed in the left hand column, and the last listing
under "R&R Today" is a link to ratings.

If you click on ratings, and choose Los Angeles, you will find the
Artitron ratings dated August 15th for the Los Angeles market,
complete with comparitive ratings for 2002.
   - http://www.radioandrecords.com/Subscribers/ratings/ratmain.asp?mkt=los

The next update for the Los Angeles market is scheduled for September
12th.


Search Terms Used
==================

As stated above, I searched for "Arbitron Ratings - Los Angeles"
(without the quotation marks.

Regards,
Serenata

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Request for Answer Clarification by bwalsh999-ga on 25 Aug 2003 18:56 PDT

This is great.  One minor thing though.  I was wondering about
individual radio programs. For example, how does Rush Limbaugh rate
versus, say Tom Leykis or Howard Stern, or the John & Ken show.

Is this possible?  It's sort of confusing, becuase rush Limbaugh is
nationally syndiacted, and I think John and Ken are mainly California
listeners.

---

Clarification of Answer by serenata-ga on 26 Aug 2003 00:38 PDT

Hi again bwalsh999 ~

One of my clients had a talk show in the Dallas-Fort Worth market and
her show had a 20% market share for that time period in the DFW
market. She moved to another city and another station who does not
subscribe to Arbitron. The best information that station has are those
figures for her new market in general, not for the various time slots
- the same figures available on R&R.

We know the figures are available, but I suspect will be much harder
to find without subscribing to Arbitron or contacting each station and
obtaining the information from them.

A search on Rush Limbaugh's site [http://www.rushlimbaugh.com] for
'arbitron' and 'arbitron ratings' returned nothing. So it appears he's
not publishing his ratings in any market.

Since your request for clarification is outside the scope of your
original question, you may want to post a second question. It could be
that a Google Answers Researcher in that particular market can get the
ratings for you.

Good luck!
Serenata