Below are the latest totals for the number of U.S. radio stations.
The Federal Communications Commission released its latest count of licensed stations as of Dec. 31, 2020.
We’ve added comparisons to one year ago and, out of interest in the longer-term trends, to 20 years ago.
Picking out a few data points, the total number of full-power stations is off slightly from last year but still well above where it was early in this millennium.
Also we see that the number of FM educational signals almost doubled in two decades. Meanwhile the number of FM translators and boosters far more than doubled in those 20 years (and grew by 238 just in the past year).
And the number of AM stations has continued to shrink, albeit slowly, a little bit each year.
AM, FM commercial and FM educational combined*
Dec. 2020: 15,445
Dec. 2019: 15,500
Late 2000: 12,717
*excludes LPFMs, boosters and translators, noted below.
AM only
Dec. 2020: 4,551
Dec. 2019: 4,593
Late 2000: 4,685
(In the 1990s, the number of AMs peaked at around 5,000)
FM commercial only
Dec. 2020: 6,699
Dec. 2019: 6,772
Late 2000: 5,892
FM educational only
Dec. 2020: 4,195
Dec. 2019: 4,135
Late 2000: 2,140
FM boosters and translators
Dec. 2020: 8,420
Dec. 2019: 8,182
Late 2000: 3,243
Low-power FM
Dec. 2020: 2,136
Dec. 2019: 2,169
Late 2000: n/a
(The LPFM services was created in 2000.)
