Chicago is still a classic rock town
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👋 Hi, it's Justin. Ever since columnist Robert Feder retired in July, the lack of daily Chicago media coverage has been painful.
Why it matters: There is no shortage of media news, from investigating faux newspaper production, revealing new television news sets or announcing trusted anchors retiring.
.📈 The intrigue: After Nielsen audio put out its September radio ratings for our metro area, we decided to pick up — a bit — where Feder left off.
State of play: Chicago is a radio town.
- Just take a trip downtown to the Museum of Broadcast Communications to check out the history of radio exhibit.
- But gone are the days of radio dominance by stations like WGN, WBBM-AM and WGCI. New streaming technology and the pandemic helped shift our listening habits.
🤘 Driving the news: The Drive (WDRV) remains the last of the classic rock stations in town. In September, the station was far and away the most popular listening experience.
🎄 Runner up: The Lite (WLIT) ratings usually drop outside its popular, late-year, all-holiday programming, but the soft rock station continues to do well without it.
- Watch them retake the top spot when they start spinning Bing Crosby and Gene Autry classics in November.
🗣 The other side: Summer is usually down for talk radio. Both WBEZ and WGN-AM saw drops from August to September, but they should rebound as we near Election Day.
- 📻 And the once dominant Top 40 stations that now compete with streaming music services didn't crack the top 10.
Of note: These ratings don't break down dayparts or specific demographics.
Full disclosure: I've worked for a number of these stations.
📫 What's your favorite radio station? We want to know in our informal Axios Chicago reader poll for a story next week.