Air America Radio maintains strong Webcast presence

Even as smarmy, uninformed right-wing bloggers are foaming at the mouth waiting for Air America Radio to go belly-up, and even mainstream news sources (hello, NY Daily News!) can't get their fact straight, recent webcast ratings give the upstart network some good news.

Webcast Metrics, a firm that tracks internet listening habits, has released its "Internet Radio Top 20" rankings of the top audio streaming services on the internet, for the month of July 2006.

In the current ratings, Air America Radio finishes at #12 overall from 6AM-Midnight, and #11 from 6AM-8PM. The rankings are computed by AQH (Average Quarter Hour), meaning how many listeners are tuned in for at least five minutes in any 15 minute period. Rankings are not computed by total cume (total amount of listeners in any given time period), due to issues in computing the numbers. If this were the case, AAR would rank at roughly #8 or #9. Still, the nature of webcasting is probably more accurate than Arbitron ratings for terrestrial radio.

It should be noted that many of the services ranked have multiple channels with full-time programming. The only single-stream service that ranks higher than Air America is ESPN Radio.

Here's how they stacked up, from 6AM-Midnight:

1. Digitally Imported (Electronic/Dance)
2. AccuRadio (Multiple formats)
3. 1.FM (Multiple formats)
4. 202.fm (Multiple formats)
5. Club977 (Multiple formats)
6. ABC Radio Group (Multiple formats)
7. RadioIO (Multiple formats)
8. Big R Radio (Multiple formats)
9. ESPN Radio (Sports Talk)
10. EMF Broadcasting (Multiple religious formats)
11. Soma.FM (Electronic/Dance)
12. Air America Radio (Political talk)
13. WNYC (Public Radio)
14. Beethoven.com (Classical music)
15. GotRadio.com (Multiple Formats)
16. BoomerRadio.com (Multiple Formats)
17. WFUV (Public Radio)
18. Saga Networks (radio station group)
19. WOXY.com (two alternative rock streams)
20. KPLU (puclic radio)

On a side note, WOXY was ranked #19 on the list. Unfortunately, this great station turned off its webstream last week as it was unable to generate enough revenue to continue. My condolences to the legendary WOXY.com and its faithful listeners. As Dustin Hoffman said in Rain Man, "97X -BAM! The Future Of Rock & Roll".

You can see Kurt Hanson's report on the July rankings here, or go directly to the Webcast Metrics site.

And finally, it should be noted that the numbers provided are for the official Air America streams only. They do not include the webstreams of individual affiliates, which make up a sizeable percentage of online listening.