Boston No Longer In Top Ten

[Scott Fybush]

>A market is not just geography.  Distant suburbs where people 
>commute into a city are properly part of that city's 
>market.  Providence is not a Boston suburb.  It is a separate urban area.

As is Worcester, as is Manchester. No argument there - and there's a 
further point to be made that there's no way the class B signals of 
Boston can cover the amount of ground that the enormous Cs cover in 
Dallas and Atlanta. Mark's point, as I understand it, is simply (and 
correctly) that geography allows for a Dallas or an Atlanta to grow 
into an enormous market in a way in which the constraints of the much 
older New England markets would never allow for Boston.

(It's the same here in western New York - any "growth" that my local 
Rochester market shows is gained through nibbling a few more fringe 
ZIP codes on the periphery from the Buffalo or Syracuse markets. 
Another few years, another shift in listening/viewing/commuting 
patterns, and that "growth" is again lost to the other markets. And 
meanwhile, Phoenix or Vegas or Austin or Raleigh-Durham adds another 
whole city of Rochester's worth of population every few years.)

Given the growth patterns, Boston will be fighting to stay in the top 
15 or 20 in another few decades, not through any real attrition of 
its own population, but merely from the unchecked growth of younger markets.

s