What City Ranks Number 10 Really?

[ZLoth]

The television markets are population based, and covers more than a city, but multiple surrounding areas as well. The top 25 Television Markets cover 50% of the television households. The problem is that Nielson hasn't released a full list of markets for the past 3 years. Also, practically the entire state of Utah is considered a single television market.

[jeffandnicole]

That's not a very good measurement, though, because a lot of people don't follow traditional television anymore. That article talks about NYC losing 100,000 TV homes, but I doubt it lost 100,000 actual people; they just stopped watching TV. (The article doesn't give the context of whether a home that's streaming only counts as a "TV home" per these measurements.)

Seems like Nielson Media would be better qualified to know what's a good measurement than people who don't measure ratings as their business model. This article isn't for the average person; it's geared to advertisers who determine how to market their products.

Note the article was very specific to TV homes.  They have numerous other analytics to determine how people are watching programs.  You're reading more into this than what is intended.  (And if NYC lost 100,000 TV homes, you're thinking 1 person = 1 TV home.  It's probably more like 2.3 people, and then that's subdivided down into sex, age, and other demographics)

[Scott5114]

That's not a very good measurement, though, because a lot of people don't follow traditional television anymore. That article talks about NYC losing 100,000 TV homes, but I doubt it lost 100,000 actual people; they just stopped watching TV. (The article doesn't give the context of whether a home that's streaming only counts as a "TV home" per these measurements.)

Seems like Nielson Media would be better qualified to know what's a good measurement than people who don't measure ratings as their business model. This article isn't for the average person; it's geared to advertisers who determine how to market their products.

Then why did @ZLoth post it in a thread that is not at all about marketing products, gearing to advertisers, or modelling businesses?

Seems like if someone is holding it out as a general-purpose measuring stick one can critique its usage as such without someone jumping down their throat about how Capitalism Is Always Right Actually.

[ZLoth]

Seems like Nielson Media would be better qualified to know what's a good measurement than people who don't measure ratings as their business model. This article isn't for the average person; it's geared to advertisers who determine how to market their products.

Then why did @ZLoth post it in a thread that is not at all about marketing products, gearing to advertisers, or modelling businesses?

Because it's another method of measuring and ranking a collections of metropolitan areas, cities, towns, villages, or what have you. In this case, the measurement area for number ten is San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose.

There is no question that the top three is New York, Los Angeles, and San Jose. Beyond that, it's subject to interpretation based upon what methodology you elect to use.

[bing101]

I always look at urban population over city proper or metro population. Boston is in 10th place. With that it goes NYC, LA, Chicago, Miami, Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Philly, DC, Atlanta and Boston.

This is generally what I use as well, except the Census Bureau introduces commuting data that pulls the definitions away from the reality of continuous urban development.

For example, the boundary between two separate urban areas (Los Angeles-Long Beach and Riverside-San Bernardino) runs through this picture. Any guess where? Hint: it is a very irregular boundary that runs diagonally though the picture and almost never follows a freeway or arterial road.



The same thing happens between Dallas-Fort Worth and Frisco-McKinney, between San Francisco and San Jose, and other places. For the Bay Area, the reality is there is a string of unbroken urban development (save for the Golden Gate Bridge) from Novato south to San Jose and north to Crockett with 5.3 million people.

True and also My guess the Industrial buildings on the east side are Inland Empire and the houses that are on the west side of the picture is Los Angeles county.

[Flint1979]

A little over twenty years ago when I was doing support for a dial-up ISP, we also did after-hours support two-three other ISPs including a Las Vegas-based one which serviced the town of Pahrump. One of the user logins was "stuckinpahrump".

One of the challenges that I have with comparing city sizes is that they often rely on the city population and ignore the surrounding cities. This may have been true back in the 1940s-1950s, but things have changed. Consider these city population figures from 2020:

• Houston, TX: 2,301,572
• Dallas, TX: 1,304,379
• Fort Worth, TX: 956,709
• Las Vegas, NV: 641,903
• Detroit, MI: 639,111
• Sacramento, CA: 524,943

Right, but like I said, this ignore surrounding communities. DFW, for example, is considered one big metroplex. One way to look at it is to use the "Metropolitian Statistical Areas" (MSAs) as a comparison point which combines several contiguous counties into one area. Consider:

• Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington, TX MSA - 7,637,387 which includes Dallas (17.1%) and Fort Worth (12.5%)
• Houston–Pasadena–The Woodlands, TX MSA - 7,149,642 which includes Houston (32.2%)
• Detroit–Warren–Dearborn, MI MSA - 4,392,041 which includes Detroit (14.6%)
• Las Vegas–Henderson–North Las Vegas, NV MSA - 2,265,461 which includes Las Vegas (28.3%)
• Sacramento–Roseville–Folsom, CA MSA - 2,397,382 which includes Sacramento (21.8%)

I would consider myself a resident of Dallas even though I actually live in one of the smaller cities and am just one mile from the Dallas County line. The congressional district which I live in goes into the city of Dallas. Much of what we consider the "Las Vegas Strip" actually in the unincorporated area of Paradise, NV, but even has a large "Welcome to Vegas" sign, and is where the Las Vegas Raiders play. The Dallas Cowboys actually play in Arlington, TX, and their practice facilities and headquarters are in Frisco, TX.

If you want to look at New York City's MSA, you'll find that it's population exceeds that of New York State and includes parts of New Jersey and Connecticut.

What handicaps Detroit is that once it grew out to the 139 square miles that the city is they couldn't annex anymore land because of other cities and Redford being a charter township bordering it. Detroit has that population in 139 square miles. Detroit is located in Wayne County and Wayne County has a land area of 612 square miles which is about the same size as the mega cities like Houston and Phoenix and so on. In those 612 square miles Wayne County has a population of 1,793,561. That would be the 5th largest city in the United States if the entire county was one city. Wayne County now is actually below Detroit's peak population as well, Detroit peaked at 1,849,568 in 1950 and Wayne County peaked at 2,666,751 in 1970 and both have lost population in every census since.

[Road Hog]

The television markets are population based, and covers more than a city, but multiple surrounding areas as well. The top 25 Television Markets cover 50% of the television households. The problem is that Nielson hasn't released a full list of markets for the past 3 years. Also, practically the entire state of Utah is considered a single television market.

When I lived in Little Rock, the LR TV stations treated Arkansas as their whole market even though nobody in each corner of the state was watching or could.

[jgb191]

According to 2023, San Jose (city proper) is around 970K, so I'm wondering how accurate the 2020 figure was; doesn't seem like it's reached a million just yet but it will reach a million in a year or two the way it's been growing fast; only a matter of time before California sees its third millionaire city.

[Henry]

Talk about a hot button topic if there ever was one! If we were to include the 10 most populous cities in America, the usual suspects come to mind (Chicago, L.A., New York, Philly), but then you'd see newcomers that didn't even crack the million mark 30 years ago. So here it is by population as of 2023, according to Wikipedia:

1. New York, NY (8,258,035)
2. Los Angeles, CA (3,820,914)
3. Chicago, IL (2,664,452)
4. Houston, TX (2,314,157)
5. Phoenix, AZ (1,650,070)
6. Philadelphia, PA (1,550,542)
7. San Antonio, TX (1,495,295)
8. San Diego, CA (1,388,320)
9. Dallas, TX (1,302,868)
10. Jacksonville, FL (985,843)

[DTComposer]

According to 2023, San Jose (city proper) is around 970K, so I'm wondering how accurate the 2020 figure was; doesn't seem like it's reached a million just yet but it will reach a million in a year or two the way it's been growing fast; only a matter of time before California sees its third millionaire city.

Like the majority of the largest cities in the country, San Jose lost population 2020-2021; the housing affordability issue has meant that the largest California cities (Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco) have been slower to turn that around than the rest of the country.

According to the Census estimates for cities, from 2022-2023 Los Angeles and San Jose had minimal losses, and San Diego and San Francisco had minimal gains.

The 2024 estimates for counties has been released (estimates for cities come out later in the year), and it shows Santa Clara County gaining 29,000 from 2023-2024. Since San Jose is half the county's population, one would expect to see growth for the city.

Estimates should always be taken with a grain of salt, and it should be noted that the Census Bureau revises previous estimates with each new release. For example, comparing the 2023 city estimates and 2024 county estimates for San Francisco (co-extensive city-county), for 2024 they have revised their estimates upward for each year (July 1 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023).

[kphoger]

They have a casino called the Pahrump Nugget

whatever that Pahrump Nugget place is. I assume it's a casino

And they say Americans have low reading comprehension.

[JayhawkCO]

They have a casino called the Pahrump Nugget

whatever that Pahrump Nugget place is. I assume it's a casino

And they say Americans have low reading comprehension.

They also say that Americans don't read well.

[Max Rockatansky]

To be fair, outside of me who on this forum has been a frequent visitor to Pahrump?

[Scott5114]

They have a casino called the Pahrump Nugget

whatever that Pahrump Nugget place is. I assume it's a casino

And they say Americans have low reading comprehension.

[bing101]

i.e. Solano County: most of it is very much Bay Area (Vallejo, Benicia) but Dixon at its furthest east is pretty much Central Valley/almost metro Sacramento.

Growing up in the Bay I was born in SF but live in a nearby suburb and always tell people I'm from that suburb - identifying or self-identifying from San Francisco is something very specific to people in city limits for the most part, especially with the sporting and cultural rivalries/divide between them and Oakland.

Solano County is a case of having to respond to suburban sprawl coming from two different census areas like  Sacramento and Bay Area in this case. I am in one of these households where the rest of my family works in the Bay Area while I work in Sacramento.