In the United States, radio listenership is gauged by Nielsen and others for both commercial radio and public radio. Nielsen and similar services provide estimates by regional market and by standard daypart, but do not compile nationwide information by host. Because there are significant gaps in Nielsen's coverage in rural areas, and because there are only a few markets where the company's proprietary data can be compared against competing ratings tabulators, there is a great deal of estimation and interpolation when attempting to compile a list of the most-listened-to radio programs in the United States. In 2009, Arbitron, the American radio industry's largest audience-measurement company at the time (since subsumed into its television counterpart Nielsen), said that "the job of determining number of listeners for (any particular program or host) is too complicated, expensive and difficult for them to bother with."[1] In contrast, because most UK radio broadcasts are distributed consistently and nationwide, the complications of measuring audiences that are present in American radio are not present for British radio.
Talkers Magazine, an American trade publication focusing on talk radio, formerly compiled a list of the most-listened-to commercial long-form talk shows in the United States, based primarily on Nielsen data.
In addition to Talkers' independent analyses, radio companies of all formats include estimates of the audience in news releases. The nature of news releases allows radio companies to inflate their listener totals by obscuring the difference between listeners at any given time, cumulative listenership over a time frame, and potential audience.
The total listenership for terrestrial radio in the United States as of January 2017 was 256 million,[6] up from 230 million in 2005.[7] Of the 121 million listeners in markets served by portable people meters in 2021, an average of 7.5 million are listening to a radio at any given time, up slightly from 2020.[8] 68 percent of homes have at least one radio, with the average home having 1.5 radios as of 2020, both figures being steep declines from 2008.[9] An estimated 12% of listenership to FCC-licensed AM and FM radio stations comes from means other than the actual AM or FM signal itself, usually an Internet radio stream.[10]
Sirius XM Radio has a base of 34.3 million subscribers .[11] American Top 40 attracts over 20 million listeners per week.[12] The late Rush Limbaugh's show was the number-one commercial talk show from 1991 until Limbaugh's death in February 2021.[13] NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered are the two most popular news programs.The late Tom Kent self-estimated his listenership in 2014 at over 23 million weekly listeners over all of his network's programs, which span the classic hits, adult hits and hot adult contemporary formats.[14] NPR has an overall listenership of 57 million listeners weekly across all shows and platforms as of 2020, with a growing proportion of that figure coming from off-air platforms.[15]
Until the development of portable people meters, Arbitron (Nielsen's predecessor in the radio measurement business) did not have the capability to measure individual airings of a program the way Nielsen Ratings can for television, and as such, it only measures in three-month moving averages each month. Portable people meters are currently only available in the largest markets Arbitron serves. Thus, it is impossible under current survey techniques to determine the listenership of an individual event such as the Super Bowl; even in cases (such as in PPM markets) where such measurement is feasible, the radio industry's business model relies on selling advertising parceled by daypart rather than individual show or event. In 2022 and 2023, Nielsen released a "far from complete" report suggesting that National Football League games are among the most-listened-to events on radio.[16] [17] Major League Baseball radio broadcasts, particularly the playoffs, also rank among the most dominant broadcasts in their dayparts and home markets (usually in the evenings), with much of that coming from in-home listening.[18]
For most of its existence, Talkers Magazine compiled Arbitron's data, along with other sources, to estimate the minimum weekly audiences of various commercial long-form talk radio shows; its list was updated monthly until the magazine unceremoniously dropped the feature in 2016, then resumed publication in 2017.[19] The 2017 reintroduction also incorporates off-air distribution methods (particularly those that are Internet-based) but not satellite radio, as Talkers could not access data for that medium; as a result, the estimates for most shows increased dramatically when compared to the 2015 methodology. NPR and APM compile Arbitron's data for its public radio shows and releases analysis through press releases.[20] [21] [22] [23]
Included is a list of the 20 most-listened-to radio shows in the United States according to weekly cumulative listenership, followed by a selection of shows of various formats that are most-listened-to within their category. (Unless otherwise noted, the Talkers "non-scientific" estimate is the source.)
| Program | Format | Network | Broadcast Time | Weekly listeners (in millions) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Dave Ramsey Show | Financial talk | Midday | 18[24] | ||
| Marketplace | Financial news | p.m. drive | 14.8[25] [26] | ||
| All Things Considered | p.m. drive | 14.7[27] | |||
| The Sean Hannity Show | p.m. drive | 14.5[28] | |||
| Morning Edition | NPR | a.m. drive | 13.1[29] | ||
| The Mark Levin Show | West Coast p.m. drive | 12 | |||
| Coast to Coast AM | Overnights | 11 | |||
| The Glenn Beck Program | East Coast a.m. drive | 10 | |||
| The Dan Bongino Show | Conservative talk | Westwood One | Midday | 8.75https://www.talkers.com/top-talk-audiences/ | |
| The Mike Gallagher Show | East Coast a.m. drive | 8.5 | |||
| Delilah | Evenings | 8.3[30] | date=2012-02-14. CNN. Retrieved April 9, 2014. At the time, the estimate was at 8.8 million, a number that has fallen precipitously since portable people meters have become widespread. See: Web site: The Queen of FM Fights for Her Throne. 2016-06-15. Ira. Boudway. June 14, 2016. Bloomberg Business Week. It’s destroying radio in general, and especially shows that don't play for the meter.. Web site: Delilah Opens Up About Son's Suicide and Heartbreaking Goodbye Note: 'He Felt Like This World Was Not His Home'. 2018-02-01. Janine. Rubenstein. October 10, 2017. People Magazine. | ||
| The Dana Show | Midday | 8 | |||
| BBC World Service | Continuous (24/7) | 7.8[31] | |||
| The Hugh Hewitt Show | East Coast a.m. drive[32] | 7.5[33] | |||
| The Thom Hartmann Program | Pacifica / WYD Media | Midday | 7 | ||
| The Jim Bohannon Show | Late night | 6 | |||
| The Brian Kilmeade Show | Conservative talk | Early midday | 6 | ||
| Fresh Air | Midday | 6[34] | |||
| Conservative talk | 5 | ||||
| The Joe Pags Show | East Coast p.m. drive | 5 | |||
| Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! | Panel game show | Weekends | 4[35] |
Note on broadcast time: 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).
The pay service Sirius XM Radio was monitored directly by Arbitron from 2007 to early 2008. The final numbers available, from early 2008 (prior to when XM and Sirius merged), had 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.[36] Among formats common to both platforms (all of which have since merged into singular channels), the contemporary hit radio channels, with a combined 1.6 million listeners, ranked highest, with classic rock, hot country music, 1970s and 1980s music channels each netting approximately 1 million listeners combined.[36] Sirius had 8.3 million total subscribers in early 2008 (the Arbitron ratings were measured against a 7-million subscriber base compared to 10 million for XM) and now has more than 30 million.[37] [38] 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.[39]
Virtually all of the most-listened-to radio programs in the United States are in English. Other than English, Spanish had established national networks. Other languages (Chinese, Polish, Korean, various languages of India, and French) are broadcast only on a local level.
Beginning with the 1930–31 radio season, three ratings services measured radio listener totals. The Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting did so from 1934 to 1935. From 1935 to 1936 and 1948–49, the bulk of radio's "golden age," C.E. Hooper monitored the numbers, which were popularly called "Hooperatings." The A.C. Nielsen company, which continues to measure television ratings today, took over American radio's ratings beginning with the 1949–50 radio season and ending in 1955–56.[40] During this era, nearly all of radio's most popular programs were broadcast on one of three networks: NBC Red, NBC Blue, or CBS' Columbia network.
The top-rated radio programs on American radio from each season:[40] [41]
At his peak in the late 1930s, commentator Charles Coughlin was praised for his listener base. His show was not a network broadcast but was instead syndicated on 36 stations. Some modern estimates peg his listenership at approximately 30 million listeners.[42] President Franklin D. Roosevelt's irregularly scheduled fireside chats, simulcast on all of the major networks, consistently reached over 50 percent of the listening audience during his last five years in office.[43]
In the 1980s, the Larry King Show was the most-listened-to program in the United States, before The Rush Limbaugh Show.[44] During the early 1990s, Chuck Harder was Limbaugh's most prominent rival among talk shows discussing sociopolitical issues.[45]
Though radio listenership totals collapsed in the 1950s with the advent of television, some radio programs attracted large audiences decades later. Before moving to satellite radio in 2006, The Howard Stern Show peaked at 20 million listeners on syndicated terrestrial radio.[46] Unlike the above programs, Stern's radio show was broadcast daily for 4–5 hours per day. Paul Harvey, at his peak, drew an estimated 25 million listeners to his 15-minute daily program.[47] At his peak in the 1990s, The Rush Limbaugh Show was drawing as many as 20 million listeners a week; as of 1998, Stern, Limbaugh and then-first-place Dr. Laura Schlessinger were drawing between 17 and 18 million listeners, according to Talkers estimates.[48]
At the time of both shows' departure from Talk Radio Network in fall 2012, The Savage Nation was estimated to have an audience of 9 million listeners and The Laura Ingraham Show was estimated at 6 million listeners. The later revivals of both of those shows were only registering an estimated 3 million listeners as of April 2013; Savage's estimate has since rebounded. Prior to his retirement, Neal Boortz registered approximately 5.75 million listeners. The public radio series Car Talk with Click and Clack had approximately 4 million listeners immediately prior to ending its original run, ranking it among the most-listened-to weekend radio programs in the United States; individual affiliates noted that the hour of highest listenership on their stations were during Car Talk, hence why it was kept in reruns for five years afterward.[49] Talk of the Nation registered 3.2 million listeners prior to its cancellation in 2013.[34] Immediately prior to Blair Garner's departure from the show in July 2013, After Midnite was quoted as drawing 2.7 million listeners, the most of any country music show for which listenership estimates are made available.
Total listenership in the United Kingdom in December 2023 was 49.473 million. All BBC programming had 31.286 million listeners, and all commercial programming had 39.130 million listeners. The figures counted listeners over the age of 15 who tuned in for at least five minutes.[50]
| Station | Format | Listeners in millions | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adult contemporary/AOR | 13.281 | ||
| Spoken word (news, drama, factual, comedy) | 9.116 | ||
| Current-based music (pop, rock, dance, urban, alternative) | 7.330 | ||
| Greatest Hits Radio | Classic hits and specialist music | 6.753 | |
| BBC Radio 5 Live | Rolling news, discussion and sport | 5.245 | |
| Classic FM | Classical music | 4.689 | |
| Magic | 4.157 | ||
| talkSPORT | Sports radio | 3.081 | |
| BBC Radio 6 Music | Multi-formatted (electronica, punk, funk, hip hop, trip hop, indie) | 2.519 | |
| LBC | News, discussion, debate | 2.467 | |
| Kisstory | Classic dance music | 2.368 | |
| Absolute Radio | Classic rock | 2.359 | |
| Kiss | Rhythmic CHR | 2.349 | |
| Heart London | Hot Adult Contemporary | 2.003 | |
| BBC Radio 3 | 1.775 | ||
| Capital Xtra | Hip hop, grime and R&B music | 1.686 | |
| Heart 80s | Music from the 1980s | 1.678 | |
| Magic London | Adult contemporary | 1.670 |
Of breakfast programmes, the top three most listened to are BBC breakfast programmes.
| Q4 2023 | Year-on-year change | |||
| BBC Radio 2 Breakfast Show | 7,136,000 | 6,562,000 | −8% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BBC Radio 4 Today | 6,170,000 | 5,615,000 | −9% | |
| BBC Radio 5 Live Breakfast | 1,608,000 | 1,453,000 | −10% | |
| LBC | 1,353,000 | 1,341,000 | −1% | |
| Talksport | 1,144,000 | 1,243,000 | 9% |