Who’s Winning in Top 40’s Most Competitive Markets?

With Top 40 suffering its lowest ratings in years, it can be helpful to look to the few stations in the format that are still doing well. 

To that end, Alan Burns and Associates analyzed the format and its competition in the Top 50 markets to find the stations performing best in crowded markets. We used June 6+ shares for this analysis (see all fifty markets and leaders in our previoius blog).

The first thing we note is that 47 of the 50 markets’ format leaders are Mainstream Top 40. While twenty of the fifty markets – almost exclusively in the West and Southwest – have a Rhythmic Top 40, Rhythmic wins the Top 40 race in only three.

Next, we looked at the effects of competing with multiple Mainstream Top 40s and, separately, of having a Hot AC in the competitive mix: leaders who had to compete with at least one other mainstream Top 40 had average shares that were 0.4 lower than those who didn’t. Leaders who had a Hot AC to contend with suffered even more – their shares were 0.6 lower, on average than those who didn’t.

Oddly, Mainstream Top 40 leaders who had a Rhythmic competitor actually averaged a slightly higher share (by 0.2) than those who didn’t.

Thus, the most competitive situation for a Top 40 is to have both another Mainstream Top 40 and a Hot AC to do battle with.

So who does best in that situation? We’re happy to say the winner is KMXV in Kansas City, an Alan Burns and Associates client. Here are the top three stations in “multi-mainstream + Hot AC” markets:

KMXV, Kansas City – 6.6

WKST, Pittsburgh – 5.4

KHTS, San Diego – 4.7

The overall share for all fifty Top 40 leaders was only 4.0; if you’re looking for “who’s doing it best” you’d do well to focus on the one or two farthest above that average.

In our next installment, we’ll look at which Top 40 wins the 25-54 battle.

Alan Burns and Associates has advised winning contemporary music stations like KMXV for over 30 years in markets as large as New York (Z100) and Los Angeles (KIIS) and as small as Biloxi and Fargo. Reach us at (251)243-1592.