Country Music Nation’s Most Popular Radio Format

You’d never know it by New York, but country music remains by far the most popular format on American radio.

According to the annual survey by the trade magazine M Street Journal, there are 2,491 country stations in the United States - almost a quarter of the nation’s 10,350 commercial stations.

The second-most popular format is adult contemporary, an increasingly nebulous term, with 1,508 stations. News/talk/sports/business is third with 1,331, and fourth is religious stations, with 1,063.

Oldies and classic hits are fifth with 927, followed by modern, album and classic rock with 803; adult standards (551); Spanish and ethnic (549); top-40 (358); and urban (349).

Other commercial formats have fewer than 100 stations.

Meanwhile, the country’s 2,132 non-commercial stations are mostly composed of four formats: religion, news/talk, variety and rock.

Since 1989, when M Street started its survey, the biggest growth has been in the news/talk/sports/business format, which has added more than 1,000 stations. It picked up 104 stations in the past year - 59 commercial, 45 non-commercial.

Since 1989 there have also been big increases in rock (438 more), religion (367) and oldies (382). There were big dips in adult contemporary (550 fewer stations) and top-40 (593 fewer).

Beautiful music/easy listening has been pretty much wiped off the radio map, falling from 328 stations in 1989 to just 49 today.

The total number of stations has increased by 1,662, with 1,096 new commercial stations and 566 non-commercial.