Day 1 Of Ratings

I've been excited about the concept of DTS Autostage analytics for a while and the possibility of getting better-than-PPM-level data. It's been in the news quite a bit lately, especially with some big radio groups eyeing it as a replacement for PPM.

But I wasn't getting any data back, and I figured it was because my "market" was just too small. Or because I was straddling the Reno and Las Vegas data regions.

Then, a few days ago, I read an article in Radio World that mentioned you don't get analytics unless you're sending "now playing" information to DTS Autostage. That had never occurred to me as a potential issue. Up until now, I'd only been using RDS for my minute-to-minute updates.

So yesterday, I started to put together a "now playing" feed and sent a few test pings to DTS. This morning, when I woke up, I had a heat map... and it goes back several months!

Wow. Wow. Wow.

First off, I'm absolutely shocked. I'm in the process of upgrading my transmitter (a/k/a waiting for FCC approval), so I'm currently broadcasting at a measly 15 watts, horizontal only. It's a difficult signal to receive. But people are listening to this very weak signal, even in places where I can barely detect it myself. They're listening for 41 miles along US 95.

The hot spots right now appear to be the two electric vehicle charging stations and the truck stop. This pleases me greatly.

I'm between formats right now, so the station is mostly international pop music, which in 2026 is very dance music-centric. It's actually doing much better than I hoped, and this bodes well for what I've been working on with the new format.