Chalk One Up for Experience: What the WLRH Data Actually Shows
I’ve been tracking WLRH-FM in Huntsville, Alabama since last fall.
More specifically, I’ve been looking at the fallout from the unilateral decision by the Alabama Educational Television Commission to drop NPR programming on the station as of October 1, 2025. That fallout includes steep year-over-year losses in revenue for both membership and major‑donors. But it’s also having an impact on its listeners.
In an earlier post, I asked whether WLRH was facing an audience crisis. If I’m being honest, the answer at this time is likely, but not definitively. That’s because additional clarification as it relates to the audience data is needed.
So, a bit of a down-in-the-weeds alert (!) as I explain what I’ve learned:
This all gets back to the Huntsville radio market, which is surveyed by Continuous Diary Measurement (CDM). This means the market is surveyed year round, every month, and the data is presented in rolling three month averages. Stations can subscribe to receive monthly data OR, can receive data for only the Spring or Fall.
So, to recap: in a CDM market (like Huntsville) where 12 data points are available, a station (such as WLRH) only subscribes to two of these data points:
June (the official Spring book) = Apr–May–Jun (3-month rolling average)
December (the official Fall book) = Oct–Nov–Dec (3-month rolling average)
No judgement is being made here. The Spring and Fall Books are Nielsen's major rating periods where they conduct the most rigorous audience measurement. Some stations in mid-sized and smaller markets only subscribe to these, meaning they pay for and receive full, detailed ratings data during those windows only.
In earlier posts, I cited audience data outside of WLRH's subscribed rating periods. (I am unable to publish the numbers here, but I can link to them via Radio Online) Those numbers, while publicly available, carry a different methodological weight than the Spring and Fall books, and are not created equally. I should have been clearer about that distinction. Those posts have been updated accordingly.
What the Data Can and Can’t Tell Us
It's worth noting that the numbers outside the official rating periods aren't without value. They may suggest a directional trend. But they can't be treated as precise measurements, which is why the Spring and Fall books remain the most reliable basis for any conclusion.
Why might these numbers get published in the first place? For an outside observer, the rules governing what data appears and what doesn't are murky, confidential, and unexplained. And on that page, there's no disclaimer explaining that the data is incomplete, that “N/A” (which appears in place of data for some months) has multiple possible meanings, or that what you're seeing is a filtered slice of a proprietary system.
What we know for certain
3.0 share in Spring 25 = the last fully subscribed book before the change.
2.0 share in Fall 25 = the first fully subscribed book after the change.
These figures are drawn from a public document presented at an Alabama Educational Television Commission board meeting, and are not sourced from Radio Online.
These may look like small numbers, but they represent a major shift in listening. That’s because share is a station’s percentage of all radio listening in a given time period. A drop in share means listeners are tuning in less often, staying for shorter periods, or leaving the station entirely. In this case, that's a 33% decline. It's significant.
The next clean measurement will be the Spring 2026 book, and it will be the first year-over-year comparison since the format change. The data is scheduled to be released on August 4th. That apples-to-apples comparison will tell us whether the 33% decline from Spring 25 to Fall 25 represents the floor, or whether the audience continues to erode.
That's the next number worth watching.