Savage’s “Internet Streaming Ratings”

On tonight’s show, Michael “Savage” Weiner pondered about the significance of his high internet streaming ratings.    The Source of this “list” was TalkStream live – the same source that had Tammy Bruce convinced she was the most popular radio show in America – because she was sending her listeners to that web site to click on her link over and over.

I found a clip on YouTube from October 3rd by Savage on the same subject – but it didn’t sound like a word for word “best of” of what I heard tonight.   Joe Farrah of WorldNet “Obama Birth Certificate is a fake!” Daily passed it along to Savage in October.

TalkStream Live only measures the people who use that web site (as is true of the list here also).   Only Ando Media has useful statistics for the industry, as they measure everything and know session durations.

Streaming tends to skew toward shows that people know about but are unable to stream – either the local affiliate dropped the show, or the people are not at home (like military people stationed overseas).    Savage has always been in the top 5 here and does have a major streaming audience – I’m not disputing that, only the significance of it.   Quinn and Rose have a highly distorted streaming “share” because they were on Sirius XM and had national visibility, but only on a handful of actual radio stations, located around their home base in Pittsburgh, PA.

It’s also misleading to discuss “share” in the context of streaming.   Radio listening (and streaming) is not level throughout the day.   Rush Limbaugh’s show is on during the day (and not refed in the evenings).   The bulk of streaming is being done by people at work which would tend to favor Rush if you look at the entire day.

Telling a show’s “share” doesn’t mean much unless you know how big the pie is at that time.    I have a feature where you can select one hour – on a specific day, Monday-Friday, or all week.

Rush dominates the three hours his show is fed live:

http://streamingradioguide.com/listen-graph.php

Noon (ET)   63.2%
1 PM               53.4%
2 PM               525%

Note that I only count when people start listening – I can’t (and don’t) measure how long a person listens – so the numbers reflect the hour when people started to listen.

Savage on the other hand is more dispersed because his show is not carried live on many affiliates:

6 PM             45.3%
7 PM            39.7%
8 PM            38.9%
9 PM            30.0%
10 PM         27.0%
11  PM         24.5%
Midnight    17.6%
1 AM            10.1%
2 AM            9.0%
3 AM          15.6%
4 AM          10.9%

If you look at the entire day, Monday-Friday:

Rush Limbaugh  – 17.1%
Glenn Beck  – 12.3%
Laura Ingraham – 11.0%
Michael Savage – 9.1%
Dennis Miller –  4.6%
Sean Hannity – 4.1%

Sample Size:  139,870    (over the past 96 days)

Hannity has dropped significantly over the past few years and Mark Levin (Savage’s direct competitor)  is really trailing.   Levin is syndicated by ABC (now Cumulus Media) which lacks the syndication clout of Clear Channel.