I don't know if you were tryin to be figurative or literal when refering to WORT-FM's "Mel and Floyd" as "Madison's favorite radio show." According to the latest Arbitron ratings WORT-FM isn't even listed as one of the top 25 most popular radio stations in the area:

Johnny

Madison's Favorite radio show is not necessarily the same as the most popular or most listened to radio show. Sure, if you go by Arbitron ratings, I doubt they are at the top but we're more interested in what our readers are listening to or what Isthmus readers are listening to because those are the people who are likely to have common interests and read Dane101.

It's sorta like those surveys when people pick Pizza Hut or something as best pizza in Madison. People who actually sample a variety of pizza would probably rate Pizza Hut pretty average, but since any idiot can respond to the survey, Pizza Hut wins.

I know that sounds really elitist but its true for a lot of things and especially things like radio shows. Sometimes the lowest common denominator "wins" even though it's not better than other choices.

Hello all--

In addition to the stuff I do in WORT's news department, I'm also the guy at the station who crunches the Arbitron numbers. See, Arbitrons don't actually register non-commercial radio stations directly. They just send all their data on non-comm stations to the Radio Research Consortium, and it's the RRC that reports the non-comm data to us. The Arbitrons are really all about selling ads, and that's why they only list the commercial stations. If public radio beat all the commercial stations out (see below), that wouldn't look so good.

The ratings you see at the site Johnny Blood pointed out are based on AQH, or Average Quarter-Hour listeners. That is, the "ratings" that you see are based on the average number of listeners at any given time. Ratings, in this sense, are not based on the "Cume", that is, the cumulative number of listeners across the week. That is a different measurement.

Anyway, that said, both WORT Community Radio and WERN (WI Public Radio's flagship station in Madison) *would* make the list. I'm not at liberty to share much of the information or the details, because the Arbitrons are proprietary. But I can say that if non-commercial stations were included in the AQH ratings, WORT's figures would make us somewhere around #13-16, depending on which season's report we look at. WERN's figures would make it #1-4 in the market, depending on which season's report.

I'd also like to add that WORT's Cume figure is higher than expected. Even though our AQH puts us in the teens for ranking, our Cume would put us higher. We have many listeners who drop in for a relatively short amount of time, in addition to the many who listen quite a lot.

Getting back to Mel & Floyd, it can be voted on as "Madison's Favorite" because it's local, it's so very tied to the local community, and it's funny as shit. It's one of a kind. AND it consistently raises lots of money during pledge drives and posts good numbers in our Arbitrons.

Have a good one!

~Nathan