Bragging Rights Retained: Houston Keeps Its Status As A Top-Ten TV Market

Photo by Frankie Roberto

​Those of you who toil in the world of local TV can rest easy -- you're still in a Top Ten market.

It's an important piece of braggadocio to throw around, so people like to keep their eye on Neilsen's annual rankings of television markets.

It came out today, and shows Houston is still solidly in tenth place.

It's not like we have much to worry about from the 11-th place market: Detroit is losing viewers. But 12th-ranked Phoenix is growing, and at a slightly faster rate than us. Theestimated number of Houston viewers in the market in 2010 grew to 2,123,460 from 2009's 2,106,210; in Phoenix the relevant numbers were 1,873,930 and 1,855,930. (Detroit's 2010 number is 1,890,220.)
Houston doesn't have much hope of catching 9th-ranked Washington, D.C. anytime soon (2010 number: 2,335,440).

And this is one area where we fall far behind Dallas. (Well, this and "Total Number of Pompous A-Holes.")

Dallas is mixed in with Fort Worth and the rest of the Metroplex, which makes them the 5th-ranked market, with 2,544,410 next year.

None of the Top Ten markets actually changed rank this year; the biggest one to do so was Seattle/Tacoma, which switched places with Tampa/St. Petersburg to move to 13.

So rest easy, TV types. Your bragging rights remain safe for another year.