Philly Loses Meaningless Distinction

Despite the best efforts of, ah, Joey Sweeney and uwishunu, Philadelphia has finally slipped enough in population and has fallen behind Phoenix according to the census bureau. Philadelphia has been rumored to have fallen to sixth about 4500 times since 2000, but the Arizona city has finally “officially” passed us.

The complaint, of course, is that Phoenix can annex its suburbs and soon will be as large as the entire state of Arizona. This was the same complaint Philadelphians lodged over a century ago when Chicago passed Philly to become the second largest city in the country. If you’re scoring at home, that means Philly’s been getting screwed for over 100 years and nothing has changed. (The Phillies sucked then, too.)

The Philly metro area (Philly-Camden-Wilmington) has also been passed for fourth place by the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. It’s probably best to blame Camden here, so that’s what we’re going to do: Hey, Camden! Thanks for knocking us into fifth, you bums!

All hope is not lost, though. While there may be fewer of us, Philadelphia still is fourth in one important category: Time spent in front of the idiot box.

One population category in which the Philadelphia area still can claim fourth place, at least for now, is as a media market. According to Nielsen Media Research, we trail only New York, Los Angeles and Chicago in total potential viewers within range of our local television stations. By the way, Dallas ranks sixth on that score, Phoenix 13th.

Woohoo! Now get us our MLS team so we can stop watching stupid reality shows or whatever. Nah, just kidding, that’s what we’ll do anyway.

Census hits city where it counts [Inquirer]