Chantilly, VA - May 10, 2010 - BIA Kelsey has released radio owner revenue statistics for several years, and Radio magazine has reported these statistics as well. The report lists the top 15 overall revenue radio owners and includes information about the number of stations the group owns and the number of markets the group serves with those stations.

The BIA Kelsey ranking is based on overall revenue alone. While this statistic is interesting, it's automatically skewed because the number 1 station (Clear Channel) owns nearly 20 times more stations than the number 15 ranked company (Beasley). Radio magazine has taken this data one step further and derived an owner revenue average based on the number of stations owned. We believe this statistic reveals more about the owners than the raw revenue number. In general it can be assumed that a higher average revenue per station means a higher average advertising rate.

The report findings were noted on the BIA Kelsey blog. From that post, BIA Kelsey notes that the top 15 companies for 2009 are the same as 2008, but there are some small differences in overall ranks. BIA calls Clear Channel, CBS Radio, Citadel, Cumulus and Entercom the perennials because they consistently make the cut.

While Clear Channel has an obvious lead in number of stations at 847, BIA says the average number of stations owned by these major groups is around 96. BIA says that groups in the 40-230 range of stations seem to have reached a valuable level of efficiency to help them maintain effective control, while also being cost effective in purchasing equipment, testing things in the market, and being nimble enough to make change.

In addition to the 2009 data, Radio magazine has pulled the rankings from several past surveys for comparison.