IOWA RATINGS: NEWS & TRIPLE A ARE UP, CLASSICAL IS DOWN A BIT

2014 Arbitorn Map

There are six Nielsen Audio markets in Iowa.  Today we are looking at Spring 2017 estimates of weekly listeners in five of the six. Many people think Iowa Public Radio (IPR) covers all of Iowa the way Minnesota Public Radio covers Minnesota and Wisconsin Public Radio covers Wisconsin.

The truth is that IPR covers four of the six rated metros.  When IPR was created a little over a decade ago, it was a forced merger of stations operated by Iowa State University, the University of Iowa and Northern Iowa University. Officials of the new IPR offered membership to stations in Council Bluffs and Sioux City, but they declined. (Sioux City is the sixth Iowa rated market but there are no noncom Nielsen subscribers there.)

On the left is a composite of Iowa noncoms that subscribe to Nielsen, aggregated to show the reach of IPR stations and stations owned by religious broadcaster Northwestern College, based in St. Paul.

As in past surveys, Northwestern’s Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) stations have the largest statewide reach.   

Northwest built most of these stations in the 1960s and 1970s, so they have been around long enough to become established. Northwestern owns and operates CCM powerhouse KTIS in the Twin Cities. Their stations in Iowa’s two largest markets, Des Moines and Cedar Rapids air some locally originated programming and satellite-delivered stuff from KTIS.

IPR operates three programming channels: IPR News, 24/7 NPR and local news; IPR Studio One, the brand name for a dual format service of NPR News and Triple A; and IPR Classical.  Two of the three – News and Studio One – have shown nice weekly listener gains in recent years. IPR Classical has languished.

One reason for the discrepancy in performance is that when the merger occurred Studio One got the best FM frequencies, particularly KUNI and WOI-FM. IPR News is built on WOI-AM and WSUI-AM, big coverage stations where Iowans have heard the news for decades.

On the other hand, IPR Classical got the FM signals that were leftover. This hurt IPR Classical in Des Moines where six signals cover parts of the city but none cover it completely.

Now lets look at the five markets in alphabetical order:

In Cedar Rapids all three IPR formats lost estimated weekly listeners when Spring 2017 data is compared with Spring 2016. 

KCCK has played Jazz music for many years but the recent loss of weekly listeners might cause them to re-evaluate. 


A 24/7 Triple A might do really well here because the metro includes Iowa City.

The difference in signal strength is apparent in the Des Moines numbers. 

I’d love to see the listening numbers for Triple A KFMG 98.9 FM, a gutsy LPFM station led by Ron Sorenson, a legendary radio guy. Des Moines has always been a hot progressive music town.

Folks in Omaha and “The Bluffs” love Iowa Western Tech’s KIWR – a/k/a The River – an alternative rock phenomenon that is self-supporting. 

KIWR is the station that championed Conor Oberst before he even hit puberty.

The Quad Cities are more of a concept than a city. The “quads” are comprised of Davenport and Bettendorf in Iowa, and Moline and Rock Island in Illinois. 

I used to visit QC when I was a consultant for The Stanley Foundation in nearby Muscatine.  I always had the feeling I was in a much smaller city because QC is an amalgam of small cities.

WGVV is one of the most successful LPFM stations in the nation. Folks who are familiar with the market feel that Jay Pearce has done a terrific job bringing WVIK to life but it hasn’t translated into ratings gains.

Waterloo-Cedar Falls has been well-served by public radio since the 1980s.   

Engineering consultant Doug Venier was GM of KUNI before the IPR merger and he did things right.