Reviewed by Peter Berk, President and Chief Media Strategist, Berk Marketing · Last updated 19 September 2026
Houston
The largest market in Texas, spread across a metro so wide that the drive time is the medium. Berk Marketing buys Houston for advertisers today, and represents no station in it.
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Short answer. Houston rewards advertisers who pick one format and buy it properly. The market leader is an adult contemporary music station, the news and talk audience is concentrated on a single heritage AM signal, and there are now three sports stations splitting the Astros, Texans and Rockets audience between them. Spanish-language radio is a large, separate audience that needs its own creative and its own call handling. The practical entry point is about five thousand dollars a week, and we already place a Houston advertiser on the key stations at remnant rates, so the negotiating relationships here are current rather than theoretical.
Station by station
These pages cover what each one costs to buy, who is actually listening, and how the schedule should be built for that format.
The market in numbers
Sunny 99.1 holds nearly a tenth of all listening on its own, and the next four stations are all music too. That shape changes how a Houston schedule should be built.
| Station | Dial | Branding | Format | Owner | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KODA-FM | 99.1 FM | Sunny | AC | iHeartMedia | 9.6 |
| KGLK-FM | 106.9 and 107.5 FM | The Eagle | Classic Rock | Urban One | 6.8 |
| KMJQ-FM | 102.1 FM | Majic | Adult R&B | Urban One | 6.6 |
| KTBZ-FM | 94.5 FM | The Buzz | Rock and Alternative | iHeartMedia | 5.5 |
| KKBQ-FM | 92.9 FM | 93Q | Country | Urban One | 5.4 |
| KIKK-FM | 95.7 FM | 95.7 The Fan | Sports | Audacy | 5.3 |
| KTRH-AM | 740 AM | NewsRadio | News and Talk | iHeartMedia | 4.7 |
| KHMX-FM | 96.5 FM | Mix | Hot AC | Audacy | 4.0 |
| KLOL-FM | 101.1 FM | Mega | Spanish Contemporary | Audacy | 3.8 |
| KILT-FM | 100.3 FM | The Bull | Country | Audacy | 2.7 |
Top ten commercial stations by share. Sunny leads the market at 9.6. The news, talk and sports signals (95.7 The Fan, NewsRadio, SportsTalk, 95.7 The Fan) combine to 12.1, and the Spanish-language stations to 16.5. Source: Nielsen PPM as published on our radio stations by market page, which is updated with each book.
How Houston listens
The commute is long and it is in a car. Houston has one of the longest average drive times of any large US market, and almost none of it is on rail. Morning and afternoon drive are not just the best dayparts here, they are where a disproportionate share of the whole day’s listening happens. A schedule that spends its weight anywhere else is buying the wrong hours.
News and talk is one station, sports is three. NewsRadio 740 KTRH carries the news and talk audience almost alone, which makes it easy to buy and easy to sell out. Sports, by contrast, is now split between SportsTalk 790, 95.7 The Fan and The Bet on 650, each with its own play by play rights and its own daypart strengths. An advertiser who wants the sports audience has to choose, and the choice depends on which team season is running.
Spanish-language radio is its own market. The Spanish-language stations together hold more listening than the market leader itself, and more than the news, talk and sports signals combined. That audience responds to radio, but only to a Spanish-language spot, a Spanish-language landing page and someone who can take the call in Spanish. If that last piece is not in place, buy it later rather than badly.
The listener is following a story or a conversation, so fewer commercials a day do the job and a spot written to match that delivery carries more information. In Houston that means KTRH for news and one of the three sports signals in season.
The listener is half attending, so the message needs repeating, which means weight on one station rather than money spread across four. Sunny 99.1, Majic 102.1 and 93Q each reach a large habitual audience that can be bought for frequency.
Why format decides frequency, in full, is on the local radio advertising page.
Money
Houston is a two-group market at the top: iHeartMedia owns the AC leader, the rock station and the news and sports AMs, and Urban One holds the classic rock, adult R&B and country signals, with Audacy in sports and hot AC. That concentration matters because the groups sell packages across their clusters, and a package built for the seller’s inventory is not the same as a schedule built for your customer. We buy the station, not the cluster, and negotiate each group against the others.
The practical entry point for a terrestrial campaign here is about five thousand dollars a week, the same floor as every market we buy, and it needs to run long enough to build frequency rather than a week or two to see what happens. What sets the rate, what moves it and how remnant inventory changes the arithmetic is covered on the radio advertising costs page.
Berk Marketing represents advertisers and holds no Houston inventory. We go to the stations and the groups for availability and price, negotiate each against the others, write and produce the commercial in house, place the schedule and track what it returns by station. Where a station has unsold airtime, we buy it as remnant, typically 40 to 60% below the published rate card, and you are refunded or credited for any spot that does not run.
Fit
Worth knowing first
We work with advertisers who have not already been in contact with a radio station’s sales rep. We are not in the business of taking clients away from stations, and once an advertiser has been quoted directly, our ability to bring remnant pricing on that station is compromised.
The consequence lands on you rather than on us. If Houston is on your list and you have not spoken to anyone yet, that is exactly when this is worth a call.
We will run a competitive monitoring report at no charge and with no obligation. It shows which Houston stations your competitors are on, at what times of day, how many spots, and it includes the actual audio of their commercials.
In many cases nothing shows up at all, and that is worth knowing too.
Get the ReportQuestions
It depends on who buys from you. For a considered purchase where the listener needs information, the news and talk audience on KTRH gets more across in fewer spots. For a broad consumer offer, the big music stations reach more people and need more frequency. For a male audience, the three sports stations in season. We would not name one station before hearing what you sell and who your customer is.
The practical minimum for a terrestrial campaign is about five thousand dollars a week, here as elsewhere. Beyond that, the rate depends on the station, the daypart, how long you commit and whether the airtime is bought at rate card or as remnant inventory. How the rate is set and negotiated is covered on the radio advertising costs page, and a written plan for your budget costs nothing.
Not on broadcast radio. Every Houston station covers the whole metro, so you pay for the whole metro. If your customer is in one part of town, the answer is usually a station whose audience skews that way, a schedule concentrated in the dayparts when that customer is listening, and creative that names the area, rather than trying to buy a smaller signal.
Only if you can take the call in Spanish. The Spanish-language audience here is large and responsive, but it responds in Spanish, and a Spanish spot that lands on an English-only phone line wastes the buy. When the business can handle it, a Spanish-language schedule is often the best value in the market.
Yes. We place a Houston advertiser on the key stations at remnant rates today, so the relationships with the Houston groups are current. We represent advertisers only and hold no station inventory, so there is no Houston signal we are obliged to recommend.
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