The following is Chicago area FM band-scan list. This list should give you an indication of what stations you might hear in the Chicago area on the FM broadcast band. The following stations should be heard on a simple FM receiver with just the whip antenna. I heard many of the stations on the list on regular basis on my car radio. By using a good receiver with an outdoor FM antenna equipped with a rotor the results might be even better.

For this list I used results from several band-scans I conducted in the past years from my location in the Chicago’s western suburb of Wood Dale, Illinois. Depending on your location, the stations you will receive might vary. For example if you live in northern suburbs, stations from Wisconsin will be better received than the ones from Indiana. On the other hand if you live in the southern suburbs, you’ll have a better chance of hearing stations from Indiana. If your location is near the lakefront, stations from Michigan should easier to pick up.

The first column of this list is the frequency in Megahertz (MHz), followed by the station’s call letters, followed by the city/state of license, programming format, station ID/slogan/or affiliation, antenna power in kilowatts (kW), antenna height in meters, antenna coordinates, antenna location/other notes, and finally the signal rating of the station at my location in Wood Dale. If there is no signal rating, that means that I can’t hear the station at my location, however it is possible to hear the station in the Chicago area depending on you location. The signal rating is as follows: 5 – Excellent, 4 – Good, 3 – Fair, 2 – Poor, 1- barely audible, 0 – not heard at my location.