Nick’s Signal Spot is a new feature in which Nick Langan explores RF signals, propagation, new equipment and related endeavors.
As a sports fan who also happens to be a big-time geography nerd, where the boundaries of fandom begin and end has always fascinated me.
I live in southern New Jersey, within a 45-minute drive of Philadelphia. As a result, Philly sports teams win the day here.
With the population density of the I-95 corridor, however, driving just 30 miles north, or even east toward the shore, brings you straight into New York City territory.
What if we used radio station National Football League team affiliation data to visualize who rules where?
Of course, listening to football on the radio does not quite have the same romantic appeal as baseball. Sorry, David Samson, but that is something that will never change about baseball.
Football is the ultimate made-for-television sport, complete with instant replays, multiple camera angles and yellow first-down lines.
There are some Sundays (or Mondays or Thursdays), though, when we must be out and about instead of parked in front of the television. If you are lucky enough to have a hall of fame play-by-play voice like Merrill Reese, listening to the game on the radio is indeed the best option.
Recently, I introduced AM signals to my RadioLand app listings, and I hope to write more about the newest version of RadioLand here very soon. For now, I attempted to update RadioLand’s database to include every NFL team radio affiliate for the 2026–27 season.
This dataset does not include national Westwood One broadcasts, though it does include the separate network the Dallas Cowboys maintain with Compass Media Networks.
So, the thought entered my mind: What if I used RadioLand’s core functionality, producing projected AM/FM field strengths from a given location, and determined which NFL team’s radio affiliate was strongest at each U.S. county seat?
It has never been easier to amass large amounts of data using AI-based tools like Claude. I believe that is a great capability to have, but it also means it is easier than ever to publish a large dataset without properly scrutinizing it.
I tried as best I could, through multiple reruns, to collect data directly from official team website lists. If those were out of date, I relied on Wikipedia, followed by multiple rounds of verification.
Even so, you may spot an occasional error in the data. If you do, please let me know.
Having trouble viewing the map? Open the interactive map in full screen.
In the map, you can view each team individually by toggling the drop-down window or all of the U.S., county by county, as a whole.
Mapping by county
I am a big fan of referencing things in my daily life by county. It might be a bit of a lost art, as my favorite meteorologist James Spann has lamented, but for this exercise, I mapped the signal coverage for the county seat of every U.S. county.
Using JUDY, a machine-learning FM signal propagation model developed by my Villanova student Minh Bigting, along with a contour-based extraction model for AM, I determined a winning affiliate for each county seat.
A few notable findings:
- 3,139 county seats were analyzed (3,109 counties plus 30 Alaskan boroughs).
- 886 full-power NFL affiliate stations were identified (excluding translators), consisting of 495 FM and 391 AM stations.
- WLCL(FM) in the Louisville, Ky., market is a Baltimore Ravens affiliate due to Lamar Jackson’s University of Louisville roots.
- KCUB(AM) in Tucson, Ariz., carries the Carolina Panthers due to former Arizona Wildcat Tetairoa McMillan.
- KRWR(FM) in Tyler, Texas, carries the Kansas City Chiefs because it is Patrick Mahomes’ hometown.
- The Buffalo Bills maintain an expansive geographic network, including coverage in Wyoming, where Josh Allen played his college football.
- The Seattle Seahawks command a large footprint across Alaska.
The top five NFL franchises by total radio affiliate count, again, not counting FM translators:
- Dallas Cowboys: 91 (54 FM, 37 AM)
- Kansas City Chiefs: 86 (51 FM, 35 AM)
- Minnesota Vikings: 69 (42 FM, 27 AM)
- Denver Broncos: 58 (26 FM, 32 AM)
- Green Bay Packers: 48 (35 FM, 13 AM)
The dataset includes 27 50 kW AM stations, including 700 WLW(AM) in Cincinnati for the Bengals, 640 KFI(AM) in Los Angeles for the Chargers, 1120 KMOX(AM) in St. Louis for the Chiefs and 660 WFAN(AM) in New York for the Giants.
Technical parameters
My analysis established the following signal thresholds for each county seat:
- FM and AM stations required a projected field strength of at least 40 dBuV/m.
- FM signals were prioritized over AM. If an FM signal reached 60 dBuV/m or greater at the county seat, it was selected as the county winner.
- Because I have found that the JUDY propagation model can give disproportionate weight to FM translators, translators were counted as county winners only if their projected signal cleared 90 dBuV/m.
You can explore the interactive NFL radio affiliate map and complete dataset online at the RadioLand NFL Affiliate Map Project.
Let me know what you think!
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