The Spring '04 Ratings (July 24, 2004)

Today, we take a quick look at the Spring 2004 Arbitrons that were published a few days ago, but we didn't get around to discussing them until things finally settled down a bit.

Anyway, no radio station in San Diego got a rating that cracked the 5.0 mark for the first time probably in history, suggesting that San Diegans are listening to radio from hundreds of alternate sources, not just to get away from Clear Channel, but Infinity, Jefferson-Pilot, Midwest TV, Salem, Compass, and others too.

It's hard to imagine that back in 1994, the only radio stations that were housed in buildings in Kearny Mesa were KGB/KPOP on Engineer (moved to CCSD on Granite Ridge), KKLQ-AM (now KOGO, moved to Granite Ridge)/KKLQ-FM (Q106, now La Nueva, moved downtown), KYXY (still on Linda Vista Road), KFMB-AM and FM (still on Engineer), and KSDO-AM (moved somewhere else)/KCLX (now Viva, moved Downtown). KIOZ was housed on Kearny Mesa Road. Sunny 103.7 was housed in a downtown place; I'm guessing that seven of the stations that were housed in the Kearny Mesa area in 1994 are still housed in the area, but four of them (three of which moved twice due to Jacor, then Clear Channel buying and moving them) relocated to the current Granite Ridge Road building. More on that later.

But, anyway, one of the stations that was once housed in a building in El Cajon, in fact, it's licensed to El Cajon, KHTS-FM, now in the CCSD building, tied with smooth-jazz KIFM (which in 1994 was located on Noble Drive where the current Mighty 1090 is housed) for first place.

Third place is the Padre-less KOGO, which has strong ratings from the morning news show through Roger Hedgecock's daily radio mayor ministry, trying to make sense out of everything from the expensive North County Sprinter trolley line that won't do many people any practical good to criticizing the upcoming Gay Pride weekend in Balboa Park (he calls them gender-confused) to finding some holes in John Kerry's presidential campaign. Face it, KOGO doesn't need the Padres anyway with a lineup like this.

Fourth place by a hair is KFMB-FM with the highest-rated popular music format on the dial, Star 100.7. The once "80's and 90's" station of 1994 is now "90's and Now" of today. Jeff and Jer (despite cracks from the other morning show hosts) are still in top form and can put on a show to get people going in the morning. It's also the highest-rated radio station that is still in its original physical location since it launched ten years ago.

Fifth place is AC KYXY, almost always in the top five since I can remember.

Sixth place the once-unchallenged Z90, which was taken down a bit thanks to the upstart hip-hop XHMORE-FM 98.9, which has more than quadrupled its ratings, mostly at the expense of Z90. Can this station get into the top 15 in three months? Will Z90 try to stay in the top ten?

KFMB-AM dips a bit to seventh, followed by Univison's La Nueva, then KGB, and My 94.1 with a Star 80's-today clone featuring former Star stars Jagger and Kristi in the morning, suggesting that some of the people who are listening to My are still writing Star in the Arbitron diaries.

In the Winter book, upstart country US 95.7 was leading KSON. Now, KSON is back as San Diego's most popular country music station topping US. Magic is not in the top ten. 91X is barely beating FM 94.9 in another close same-format ratings war. The Stern-less KIOZ deflates below a 3.0 for the first time probably since the station moved from 102.1 in 1996, but KPLN, tied with KIOZ, is on an upswing and could possibly bypass KGB for the first time ever. With Howard Stern in the morning, leading to Cindy Pace middays, then the veteran Jim McInnes in the afternoon, KPLN has the potential power to pass KGB in the ratings, but neither station, musicwise, has one advantage over the other, as they both play 60s-80s classic rock music.

The Padres-powered Mighty 1090 cracked the 2 rating mark for the first time since it came on and knocked down XTRA 690 last Spring. Speaking of XTRA 690, it, along with ESPN 800, are rated below a 0.4, so low that rronline doesn't bother listing them. KSON-AM also isn't showing either, suggesting that a format with a language other than English or Spanish isn't worth programming.

KPOP 1360 and XOCL 99.3 are tied with their music of the past formats, whatever you want to call it, nostalgia and oldies.