What does radio reveal about us?
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Fifty-nine percent of Americans listen to the radio once a day. More Americans listened to the radio on a daily basis than used the Internet or read newspapers/magazines as recently as 2012.
Local radio accounts for 80 percent of radio listening and, as the data crunching site Priceonomics reports, radio stations are "impressively quick" to change formats as the tastes of the audience change.
So what does the radio tell us about us?
In its latest article, Priceonomics examined the radio ratings of the top 50 markets to try to get a picture of America.
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It found Minneapolis-St. Paul is one of the more NPR intensive areas.

But the Twin Cities disappears when all news sources on radio are added.

That is to say: We're a public radio town, but not much of a news town.
Sports is another story, however.We're No. 9. Surprisingly, the top sports town in the country is Kansas City, Mo.
And country might have its fans here, but the north is nowhere to be found on the top 10 cities for country radio.
It might be only a coincidence, but the South doesn't show up in the NPR-iest cities list.
