Where in the U.S. are the Christians?

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Where in the U.S. are the Bible readers and Christian book buyers?

Where is the best place to attract listeners and donors for a Christian formatted radio station?

I hear those questions a lot in our work with Christian radio stations, Christian publishers, non-profit organizations and Christian retailers.  Over the years we developed a set of formulas that help locate areas that are have a strong, connected Christian community.

One of the inputs is the Bible and Devotional Reading Households for each Designated Market Area¹. When we map the United States, we see this:

 

The lighter areas have more Bible and Devotional reading households in the Designated Market Area and the darker areas have fewer.  The rankings and household counts look like this:

Rank	Designated Market Area	Households
1	Los Angeles	1,137,982
2	New York	1,038,502
3	Dallas-Ft. Worth	701,169
4	Atlanta	695,273
5	Chicago	629,560
6	Houston	551,494
7	Philadelphia	516,689
8	Washington, DC (Hagerstown)	504,731
9	Detroit	380,740
10	Charlotte	368,710

So the market with the most Bible and Devotional reading households is Los Angeles, followed by New York.  That makes sense because there are a lot of people that live in those markets.  Dallas is the third largest Bible and Devotional reading market while being the fifth market by total population.  Atlanta is fourth in Bible reading while eighth in total population.

Combined with other tools, we’re able to discover opportunities for…

• Radio stations to see how their income compares with local charitable giving
• Christian publishers to see what part of the country holds the greatest promise for product sales
• Christian retailers to capture the largest share of Bible and Devotional reading households in the markets they serve

What do you see in these numbers?

^{1) Source: Lifestyle Market Analyst 2008, SRDS}