• by Masha Geller , September 16, 2002

In case you’re wondering how the streaming radio industry is doing, it looks like the British have the upper hand. Arbitron Inc. reported last week that Virgin Radio was ranked number one among individual webcast channels in the August Arbitron Webcast Ratings for the ninth consecutive month.

U.K.-based Virgin Radio had 1,263,000 aggregate tuning hours (ATH), the sum total of all hours that listeners tune to a given channel.

Jazz FM UK was ranked number two with 1,110,600 ATH and New York Times WQXR was ranked number three with 780,600 ATH. Ranked number 25 and new to the Top 25 was WLTW-FM with 134,200 ATH.

As for August Network Ratings, among webcast networks, Live365 was ranked number one with 9,217,100 ATH. Clear Channel Worldwide was ranked number two with 5,469,400 ATH; and ChainCast/StreamAudio was ranked number three with 2,824,300 ATH. Guardian Media Group moved into the top ten network ranking at number five with 1,111,500 ATH.

According to Arbitron, webcast networks are defined as radio station owners that stream their content online or companies that aggregate online audio programming. Webcast networks are ranked according to their total monthly ATH.

The rankings included in the August 2002 Arbitron Webcast Ratings are based on those stations and channels that have provided Arbitron with access to their server data. The ratings may not reflect all tuning for the measured stations or channels, since Arbitron may have received incomplete or unusable server data.