Air America Radio webcast listenership is up once again

Yeah, I know. it seems all you ever read about in the blogosphere is how Air America Radio is going bankrupt and is bilking nonprofit community centers out of money (which makes me wonder, would these conservative hacks even give two shits about an inner city youth center if Air America wasn't involved?)

Nonetheless, the latest Webcast Metrics, ratings (see this entry) give Air America some pretty positive news, and positive news for webcasting in general. In the just-released "Internet Radio Top 20" rankings of the top audio streaming services on the internet for August 2006, Air America's online listening audience is up.

In the current ratings, Air America Radio moves up from #12 to #11 overall from 6AM-Midnight, and stays put at #11 from 6AM-8PM.

In the 6AM-Midnight segment, overall listenership to the official Airamerica.com webstreams grows from 203,183 to 231,014 (with Average Quarter Hour listenership rising from 3,214 to 3,931). The listening audience from 6AM-8PM increases from 141,403 to 163,865 (AQH rises from 4,349 to 5,028).

The "Average Quarter Hour" estimate, or AQH, is defined as the estimated average number of persons tuned to a channel for at least five minutes during a 15 minute period. It can more simply be understood as "the number of people listening to a station at the average moment." Cumulative listeners, or "cume," is the non-duplicated number of different people tuning in at least once (for at least five minutes) during the time period in question.

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

You can see Kurt Hanson's report on the August 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.