Somewhere in Evansville, Ind., an old map hangs in a radio station manager’s office.
It shows ratings for the nation’s radio markets. Peter Tanz, senior vice president of Midwest Communications Inc., looked at it whenever he visited the station.
“And there’s this great big hole in the middle of the country,” he said. “That hole was where Sioux Falls is. And there’s nothing there.”
That changed earlier this year, when Midwest, which owns seven radio stations in Sioux Falls including KELO-AM and KTWB-FM, and Chuck Brennan, who owns KBAD-FM, subscribed to Nielsen Radio Ratings.
“There weren’t any ratings for over a dozen years,” Brennan said. “People just tell you, ‘My station is great. It’s No. 1. It has all the listeners.’ And none of it is true.”