Syracuse Nielsens: B104 Pulls Ahead, Hot 107.9 Cools Down

SYRACUSE — After a bit of a slump in second place or tied for first, iHeart country station B104.7 (WBBS) has firmly reclaimed the top spot in Nielsen’s radio audience size estimates for the Syracuse market. But the news wasn’t as good for top 40-formatted sister station Hot 107.9 (WWHT).

The report released this week offers a 3-month rolling average of subscribing stations for December, January and February. As per usual, we’ll include the disclaimer that Nielsen only publicly releases the “top line” ratings estimates for stations which hold paid subscriptions to the company’s full ratings reports. The “top line” includes all listeners age 12 and up, averaged over an entire week between 6am and midnight.

As usual, the two biggest grains of salt to consider:

• These ratings don’t include non-subscribing stations, most notably those owned by Galaxy Media Partners (KROCK, TK99, Sunny 102, ESPN Radio) or Cumulus Media (93Q, 95X, The Score 1260).
• These ratings don’t show how well a station performed within specific dayparts or with specific target demographics.

Again, B104.7 tops the list with an 8.3 share for the 3-month rolling average that includes December, January and February. Last month, it was tied with news/talk sister WSYR 570/106.9. Even though B104’s increase puts it clear into first place, WSYR also saw a modest gain.

iHeart adult contempoary Y94FM (WYYY) posts its second 6.2 share in a row, holding in third place. We’ll be interested to see if that holds up next month, when the 3-month rolling average will no longer include the station’s annual “all-Christmas music” stunt.

iHeart’s top 40 brand, Hot 107.9 (WWHT) was in fourth place last month with a 4.6, but lost a full share point this time around, enough to drop into 6th place behind Craig Fox’s locally owned classic hits 95.3/103.9 The Dinosaur (WSEN-FM) and New Country WOLF 92.1, which both enjoyed modest gains since the previous book.

Again, when we provide rankings like first, second, 6th, etc., we are only referring to those listed by Nielsen. Since Nielsen does not share ratings data for non-subscribing stations with the media or public, we have no way of knowing where non-subscribers would rank.

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