Arbitron, who for years has done local radio ratings, has released the Spring 2007 ratings for both XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio.
The report breaks out each service’s channel by channel data of both cume (for non-radio people that is short for “cumulative audience” - essentially the unduplicated persons or households listening during a specific period) and AQH (Average Quarter Hour - the average number of persons listening to a station for at least five minutes during a 15-minute period).
XM led with a cume of 10.33 million listeners versus the 6.6 million for Sirius.
But Howard Stern owned the top spot as the most-listened to satellite radio channel with over five times as many listeners as Opie & Anthony:
- Sirius’ Howard 100 (ch 100) had a cume of 1.22 million listeners and an AQH of 96,700
- XM’s The Virus (ch 202) had a cume of 216,800 listeners and an AQH of 20,800
XM’s listening is more evenly distributed, while Sirius is more Howard Stern-biased.
It looks like Howard went from 20 million terrestrial listeners to 1.2 million satellite listeners. His $500 million contract bought Sirius an average 97,000 listeners in any given quarter hour.
It’s interesting that the two top music channels are XM’s “20 on20″ and Sirius’ “Hits.” Both channels basically play the some top twenty over and over . . . and until recently had no disc Jockeys. It’s always been true you can’t lose by playing the hits.
Check out the full Arbitron ratings report here (PDF).
Thanks of to Orbitcast (”All Things Satellite Radio”) for the graphs.
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