BIA Advisory Services has released its annual list of the top ten highest-billing radio stations in the US for 2023. With the list came a revelation that there was an overall revenue decline for the first time, post-COVID, as the top ten saw an average decline of 5.0% from 2022.
Hubbard Radio’s WTOP in Washington, DC, has once again claimed the top spot as the highest-billing radio station in the United States for 2023. This marks the 13th time in the last 14 years that WTOP-FM has led the list.
According to BIA’s Investing in Radio 2024, 1st Edition, WTOP reported $66.3 million in over-the-air revenue, representing nearly 29% of the total radio advertising revenue in the Washington, DC market for 2023. In contrast, Hubbard’s other station in the market, WFED-AM, brings in 1.1%.
WTOP experienced the smallest decline in revenue of any top performer at 3.9%.
Ownership of these top-earning stations is concentrated, with Hubbard and Beasley Media Group each having one station in the top ten, while iHeartMedia and Audacy each have four. The programming formats are diverse: four stations program a News format, one is Sports, one is Sports/Talk, and the remaining four have music programming.
Geographically, five of the top ten stations are in New York, two are in Los Angeles, and there is one each in Chicago, Washington, and Boston.
It’s worth noting that BIA has chosen to attribute both Audacy NYC’s WINS and WFAN as FM stations, despite the FM signals simply running a simulcast of WINS-AM and WFAN-AM. If counted as AM stations, they would finish number one and number two, respectively. This would give Audacy four of the top five highest-billing AM stations in America.
Cox Media Group and Cumulus Media each have one station in the top ten AM list, while Audacy – as measured – has five and iHeartMedia has three.
As for the rest of the AM stations, iHeartMedia’s KTRH-AM in Houston-Galveston made a significant leap from #14 to #3. The programming formats for these top AM stations include five that program News, three that program News/Talk, one that combines News/Talk/Sports, and one that is Sports.
BIA will update its list of the Top 10 Radio Owners by revenue and Top 10 Billing Spanish Language Radio Stations for 2023 in the days to come.
and look at their company stock… they all SUCK!