The Top 25 Rated Sports Talk Stations For Fall 2013

Published Dec. 17, 2013 12:00 a.m. ET

foxsports

Every city has sports talk radio.

Yet there's no real way to know which cities do well and which don't.

That's why every few months, Outkick the Coverage dives into the only public ratings data for top 50 radio markets in the country and sees how the stations compare.

We come up with our own top 25 list of sports talk radio stations in the country.

These ratings are for fall of 2013, an average of three months -- September, October, and November. The ratings are for the broadest possible audience -- adults ages six and up from six in the morning until midnight all week long. So individual show ratings on all of these stations are much higher than these overall numbers. It would be better to have ratings numbers for six in the morning to six in the evening since this is when most people are listening -- and it excludes live sporting events -- but those numbers are not public.

Before all the inevitable comments begin these rankings are for the HIGHEST RATED, not the most listened to stations. If you wanted a list of the most listened to stations, you'd simply rank the biggest cities in the country since they have more people and hence more listeners. (FYI, I have never seen ratings numbers for national radio shows. I'd love to have that as well, but it's not public. And even if it was public, I'm not sure how reliable it would be).

These ratings are also the fifty largest media markets in the country. The ratings aren't public for smaller markets and most smaller markets aren't yet standardized with the same ratings measuring device as the large markets.

With those clarification markers now in place -- which will inevitably be misunderstood or missed by commenters -- here we go with the top 25 sports talk radio stations in the country.

1. Detroit

WXYT 7.8

2. Pittsburgh

KDKA 6.2

3. Providence

WVEI 5.73

4. Boston

WBZ 5.6

5. Nashville

WGFX 5.53

(Full disclosure, this is 104.5 the Zone, the station I work for).

6. Philadelphia

WIP 5.4

7. Minneapolis

KFXN 5.06

8. San Francisco

KNBR 4.7

9. Boston (2)

WEEI 4.4

10. Baltimore

WJZ 3.8

11. St. Louis

WXOS 3.56

12. Kansas City

KCSP 3.43

13. Philadelphia (2)

WPEN 3.4

14. New York City

WFAN 3.3

15. Cleveland

WKRK 3.2

15. Tampa

WPAG 3.2

17. Washington, D.C.

WTEM 3.0

17. Raleigh

WCMC 3.0

19. Seattle

KIRO 2.8

20. Chicago

WSCR 2.5

20. Denver

KKFN 2.5

20. Sacramento

KCTC 2.5

23. Memphis

WMFS 2.43

23. Dallas (two stations tied, I mean exactly the same numbers.)

KTCK 2.43

KESN 2.43

23. Washington, D.C. (2)

WJFK 2.43

...

Believe it or not, my math skills are not perfect. If you believe you found an error in Outkick's rankings, Tweet it to me or email the site.

You can look at the ratings here.