Nearly 2/3 of all listening is in building (homes, offices, workshops, etc) today. So penetration is very important. An A in Panama City will not cover the full market adequately, although a C0 barely does.
The fact is that if a station wants to compete for listening it has to be listenable with a good signal. There is enough at work and at home listening to make it of extreme value; online at the moment is generally not local and does not have opportunities for local retail accounts.
The area I live in (Baldwin Co., Ala.), despite being a desert for high speed internet choices, must be an outlier, then. I can't speak for in homes, but in businesses and especially restaurants, the listening habits to terrestrial radio is practically zero and has been for years. Five years ago, if I heard any radio station at all being played in an office, workshop or restaurant, it was almost always WXBM or WCSN. Less common was WYCT. I have not once heard WMXC or WMEZ or any of the other "at work" AC stations in an office or business setting. A few places would have WABF out of Fairhope on, in all its static-y glory.
A trend that has seen some growth in my observation is places with TVs putting the cableco music channels on. DMX or Music Choice, no idea who they are, but it's shown up at a couple of local seafood places as well as the Mexican place in Loxley that I eat at regularly. Those seafood places (a small chain) also tend to put on The Country Channel off WEAR's .2 subchannel, too.
If I hear anything terrestrial in offices or stores anymore, it's only WCSN or WYCT. I simply do not hear anyone else in Baldwin County as far as in-building listening goes. And this is where all the big TX sites are located, so reception is never an issue.
What I *do* hear? Pandora. Terrible as it is, everyone seems to be playing Pandora. Or Spotify. Or even iHeart Radio. A local diner loves to play some NY-state country station via iHeart, despite the fact we have several decent country stations in the area. I see some Apple Music/iTunes playlists on iPhones once in a blue moon, but by and large it's Pandora. No idea why, I hate that service and find it to be extremely limited. I guess it's one of those things that's popular because it's popular. A local BBQ joint uses it, and they're constantly having to go and force close the app on the phone and restart it because it keeps quitting. So stupid.
Now, in car listening is a different story, but I'm much more limited there because I do go around asking to get in people's cars. But I do hear music blasting from open windows in the summer, and again the story isn't much different. WYCT, WXBM (both technically Pensacola stations and therefore out of market), WBLX and sometimes WAVH. But again, that's about it. I've heard WTKX a few times, too. I guess people who listen to WDLT or WMXC or WKSJ are just polite and never turn the volume up.
Now, as to in-building penetration in PC, if the rumors are true that Magic skimped on the coax and bought used, then that would hurt their coverage, wouldn't it? It may be a C, but it's a C out in the sticks, north of FL-20. So while I'm sure on paper PC itself is in the 70 dBu, realistically coverage was likely worse. That has always been my experience. I always had trouble receiving 97X in Panama City Beach when I was passing through. I'm sure it was better inland, but it wouldn't even stop the scan on the radio sometimes, right in the heart of the tourist area. I certainly never had those issues with WVVE when it was on its old freq., or Sunny or WPFM.
