Tuesday evening’s release of the latest ratings for Erie radio stations only tells half the story, but it is the greater half.

The ratings company, Arbitron, decided to make public only the ratings of those stations who subscribe to their service. That means for now, we can only see what happened this Fall to the stations of Connoisseur Media, including perennial powerhouse WRTS/Star 104. We have no official access to the performance of the stations of Citadel Broadcasting or any of the independent local stations.

Hits by artists like Katy Perry fuel WRTS's domination of the Erie Fall 2010 radio ratings

Star continues to ride the wave of the resurgence of pop music, but their domination of Erie indicates a total acceptance across all demographics. The 35% increase in 12+ share year over year brings WRTS’s numbers to level’s we haven’t seen in decades.

The flagship of the Connoisseur group is the biggest of many positive stories for the occupants of the those big display windows at the Boston Store. WRKT turned around their recent ratings slide to their best book in two years. In fact the only big disappointment of the six stations was at WTWF, where they lost nearly half of their average share of audience from last year. Of course we can’t compare 93.9 The Wolf with their WXTA and WGYY country competitors, since they didn’t buy the book.

Finally, will the strength of Star and Rocket finally push crosstown Citadel Broadcasting to flip their weakest property, WQHZ to go after a slice of the larger Top 40 pie that Star owns, or a flanking move to oldies or FM talk.

Keep watching this space for further ratings fallout and punditry.