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Rush Limbaugh is no longer No. 1 on talk radio's hit parade--at least, according to a new survey published by Talkers magazine.
Dr. Laura Schlessinger is.
Schlessinger, reports Talkers, trade journal of the talk-radio industry, has a total national audience of 18 million, followed by Howard Stern with 17.5 million. Limbaugh dropped to third place with 17.25 million listeners.
After the Big Three, listenership falls off sharply. Among other national hosts heard locally, Art Bell is tied for fourth place at 8.75 million listeners; Don Imus follows in sixth place with 7.5 million; and John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou are tied for 14th with 2 million.
Although Tom Leykis doesn't make the cut among the top 15, Michael Harrison, editor and publisher of Talkers, noted in an interview that he came in "very, very close." Westwood One, which syndicates Leykis' show, reports his national audience at about 1.98 million.
The biannual survey estimates the number of people age 12 and over who tune in to a program for at least five continuous minutes during an average week. The survey total is rounded to the nearest 250,000.
While Schlessinger gained 2.5 million listeners over the past six months, Stern advanced by 5.5 million.
"Stern is hot, hot, hot," Harrison said. "With his movie {"Private Parts"}, with his becoming increasingly mainstream, more stations are picking him up, and he's taken that one step beyond. He's a giant of broadcasting, and he's no longer considered a sideshow."
Harrison's report is noteworthy because radio, unlike television, has no official list of its most popular nationwide programs. Arbitron measures listenership by hours of the day, not by show titles. So unless you know every outlet and time period of a given syndicated show, there is no way to calculate its national audience with certainty--and syndicators keep their station lineups secret, for competitive reasons.
What's particularly interesting is that Stern has by far the fewest stations among the top three. According to figures provided by their respective syndicators, Limbaugh is on 599 U.S....