The Hot Format Worldwide Is … Triple-A

I’ve written a lot about Triple-A radio in recent months. The ratings keep taking me there. In the just-released PPM, WXRV (The River) Boston, WTTS Indianapolis, and non-comm KUTX Austin, Texas, all posted record numbers. Recently profiled WXRT Chicago is currently No. 2 and was just No. 1 in the market. [WYRE] 93.5 WRNR Annapolis nearly cracked a 1 share in Baltimore, a market it barely covers.

The success stories have mounted worldwide as well. Public broadcaster RadioEins has been No. 1 in Berlin for five out of the last six ratings periods. Radio Nova Paris has gone from 1.9 to 5.1 in the March-June ratings over the last four books. Ratings expert Chris Huff says that’s the largest share for any music station in Paris since Top 40 NRJ in spring 2015.  The station now has a daily cume of 2.1 million, and has gained 1.2 million listeners in a year, the biggest percentage increase in modern ratings history, the station says.

When we last profiled KUTX in 2021, it had climbed to 4.3 at a time when those numbers were still remarkable for a non-comm, and one of several outlier stories seemingly made possible by a COVID-era shuffle in radio listening. Now, we’re writing about Triple-A success stories on a regular basis, and while they’re not happening in every market, I’m encountering them more often than sustained CHR upticks.

Triple-A stations are always thought of as the successor to AOR radio, particularly in the format’s early progressive days. But there’s a thru-line to Top 40 as well. As Triple-A incorporates more R&B and Hip-Hop, it’s starting to tap into CHR’s legacy of “the format that plays everything,” albeit a much different set of everything. I heard 3-4 R&B titles in the hour of KUTX I monitored; that’s more than a lot of CHR stations these days.

When I first encountered KUTX, the first thing I heard was a ’60s R&B obscurity, “The Stroke” by Andre Williams. The first song when I turned on Tuesday afternoon with p.m. driver Laurie Gallardo was “100 Yard Dash” by Raphael Sadiiq, another favorite that I’ve never heard on the radio. The umbrella for the station’s seasonal promotions is the “Wet Hot Austin Summer,” including upcoming events from some of the artists I heard. Here’s KUTX at 2 p.m., July 21:

• Jimi Hendrix, “Freedom”
• Alabama Shakes, “I Feel Hope Coming” — Gallardo hears “that Stevie flavor”
• LP Giobbi f/Danielle Ponder, “Is This Love”
• Feeble Little Horse, “Rewind”
• Adrian Quesada f/Danielle Ponder, “MF AF”
• English Beat, “I Confess”
• Jim James, “Come Again”
• TheBrosFresh, “Caution”
• Portugal. The Man, “Evil Friends”
• Mary J. Blige, “I’m Going Down”
• Ruben Ramos f/Carrie Rodrigues, “Ay Me Duele”
• Sly & Family Stone, “Everybody is a Star” — Gallardo recalled hearing the song’s “ba-ba-ba” coda at the end and thinking it was somebody deliberately bawking like a chicken
• Getdown Services, “The Radiator”
• Silk Sonic f/Bruno Mars & Anderson.Paak, “Fly as Me”
• Starflake, “Bajo la Luna”
• Devon Gilfillian, “Black Dog Rabbit Hole”

As the only U.S. commercial outlet profiled here, WTTS under veteran PD Lenny Diana has the highest quotient of multi-format gold titles. Like a lot of smaller-group-owned stations, it also had an encouragingly heavy emphasis on local retail and event spots, including omnibus showcases for various towns’ merchants. 

Here’s WTTS just before 11 a.m., July 21 with Pete Kilmer:

• Michigander, “Freakin’ Out” — playing an upcoming Studio 92 show, one of multiple ticket teases I heard over the course of my listening, also including Needtobreathe
• Pearl Jam, “Last Kiss”
• Police, “Roxanne”
• Noah Kahan, “The Great Divide”
• Fleetwood Mac, “Landslide”
• Lenny Kravitz, “Again”
• Gotye, “Someone That I Used to Know”
• Noah Cyrus, “Light Over the Hill”
• Tom Petty & Heartbreakers, “American Girl”
• Cure, “Friday I’m in Love”
• Goose, “Hungersite”
• Eagles, “Tequila Sunrise”
• Green Day, “When I Come Around”
• Kings Of Leon, “Sex on Fire” 
• Sheryl Crow, “If It Makes You Happy”
• Bob Marley & Wailers, “Could You Be Loved”

RBB’s Radio Eins bills itself as “Nur für Erwachsene,” or “Adults Only.” (In the U.S., that would be a harder differentiation to make when not even CHR or Hip-Hop have been “for the kids” in recent memory.) The station is planning its annual Parkfest 2026, a nine-day festival featuring shows and live broadcasts in late August. As the U.S. contemplates permanent Daylight Savings Time, U.S. broadcasters might want to consider something like Radio Eins’s recent countdown of time-related songs. (Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” was No. 1.) 

Here’s Radio Eins just before 5 p.m., July 21 with Max Spallek:

• Bombay Bicycle Club, “Willow”
• Joy Division, “Love Will Tear Us Apart”
• Hak Baker & Baxter Dury, “Nostalgia Death”
• Barbara Acklin, “Am I the Same Girl”
• MorMor f/Celeste, “Like Heaven”
• Supergrass, “Sun Hits the Sky” — ’90s Britpop with a garage/psych feel
• Tone-Loc, “Funky Cold Medina”
• Sophia Kennedy, “Being Special”
• Moscoman & 5CUDFM, “Low Blood Sugar”
• Planning to Rock f/Romy, “The One”
• Marlon Williams, “My Boy”’

When I first encountered Radio Nova in the early 2000s, it was most easily explained as the soundtrack of a European restaurant or bar and had very little relation to American Triple-A radio of the time. Now, the distance between Nova and KUTX has lessened. (The same is true for restaurant and retail music, by the way. I was recently in a drugstore in Sitka, Alaska, playing “It Seems to Hang On” by Ashford & Simpson as part of a Classic Soul mix.)

If an eclectic commercial station doubled its share over four books, American programmers would likely assume the station had somehow become tighter or more mainstream. As an observer of radio in France (and worldwide), MediaDatak’s Sam Zniber says the reverse is true. He says Nova is now less tightly formatted and has “given their jocks much more freedom to play, have fun, improvise, and actually be funny again … without sacrificing structure.”

Here’s Radio Nova at 5:45 p.m., May 26, 2026, during a show called “The Real Afternoon”:

• Bruno Mars, “I Just Might”
• Les Rita Mitsuko & Sparks, “Singing in the Shower”
• Distiz f/Laurent Voulzy, “Surfeur”
• Dr. Dre, “The Next Episode”
• Justice, “Neverender”
• Prince, “Raspberry Beret”
• Antoine Bourachot, “For Too Long”
• Doechii & SZA, “Girl Get Up”
• Blood Orange, “You’re Not Good Enough”
• Danitsa & Jarreau Vandal, “Wrong Things”
• Lenny Kravitz, “It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over”
• Grand Eugene & Miel De Montagne, “Loin”
• James Brown, “Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud”
• Arlo Parks, “2Sided”
• Bouga, “Belsunce Breakdown”

Here’s Nova at 10 a.m., July 21:

• Prince, “Girls & Boys”
• Doechii & SZA, “Girl Get Up”
• Sonya Spice, “Let Love Flow On” — 2020 retro soul with an early-’80s R&B/disco feel
• Dua Saleh, “Firestorm”
• Danitsa & Jarreau Vandal, “Wrong Things”
• Just Jack f/Kylie Minogue, “I Talk Too Much”
• Avalon Emerson, “Happy Birthday”
• Serge Gainsbourg, “Restaurant BB”
• Fcukers, “Feel the Real”
• Duffy, “Mercy”
• Erick the Architect, “No Doubt (I’m in Love)”  —samples the 1981 Evelyn King R&B hit, also drawing on the same era as the Sonya Spice song
• Camille Yembe, “Rien a Feter”
• Cymande, “The Message” — influential early-’70s UK R&B band that was the recent subject of a documentary
• Arlo Parks, “Get Go”
• Cornershop, “Brimful of Asha”
• Jorja Smith f/Wizkid, “Alive”

Radio Nova has a suite of eight side channels. Here’s an overnight hour of Radio Nova Soul:

• Say She She, “Don’t You Dare Stop”
• First Choice, “Love Having You Around”
• Lou Rawls, “The Letter” — the Box Tops song
• George & Gwen McCrae, “The Rub”
• Gabriel Jacoby, “Gutta Child”
• Sly & the Family Stone, “If You Want Me to Stay”
• Jungle, “Keep Me Satisfied”
• Herbie Hancock, “Watermelon Man”
• Stevie Wonder, “I Ain’t Gonna Stand for It”
• O’Jays, “For the Love of Money”
• Adi Oasis, “Suck in My Heart”
• Curtis Mayfield, “Do Do Wap (Is Strong in Here)”
• Kendra Morris, “Flat Tire”

Here’s our recent Fresh Listens to WXRT and WRNR.