Big 98.7

At position 1236 of 1,481, this is one of the stations in the United States that almost nobody arrives at by browsing. That is the case for having a page at all. A station reachable only by knowing its name is a station most directories lose.

No opens have been recorded against Big 98.7 in the public directory. Plenty of working stations sit at zero, because the count only rises when somebody plays the stream from a client that reports back, and most listening never touches the directory at all.

Tagged adult contemporary, along with 22 other stations in the country and 126 across the directory.

At 32 kbps this is one of the lowest rate streams on the United States' dial, whose median is 128 kbps. It will hold a connection almost anywhere, which is the tradeoff being made.

AAC+ here, on a dial that carries three different formats. A mixed codec listing usually means a country whose stations are hosted in several different places rather than through one dominant provider.

Its audio comes straight from ice3.securenetsystems.net, an address unique to this entry in the United States' listing. That is the simplest case there is, and it is the one where pressing play tells you the whole truth about whether the station is on air.