Vote Now For the Townsquare Media Listeners' Choice Awards: How Voting Works & How to Win

What are the Townsquare Media Listeners' Choice Awards?

The Townsquare Media Listeners' Choice Awards let listeners of KICK FM decide which local businesses deserve recognition in the market the station serves. The ballot carries the on-page banner Best of the Tri-State Area and asks the audience to cast a vote for top local restaurants, shops, and service providers. Behind the programme stands Townsquare Media, the broadcaster that operates 979kickfm.com and programs the station, whose studios sit in Quincy, Illinois. That makes this a broadcaster-run award rather than a chamber project or a city magazine franchise: the same company that plays the music and hosts the talk blocks also publishes the ballot, gathers the picks and reports the outcome over the air.

The entire vote happens on the station's own web property. The ballot address is https://979kickfm.com/vote-townsquare-media-listener-awards/, and it sits among the ordinary fixtures of the site: the show lineup led by Curt and Samm in the morning, a scoreboard, contact details for KICK FM and the promotional boxes the homepage rotates. A listener who arrives to vote is already inside the environment where the results will later be announced, which gives the exercise a closed loop that standalone polling services cannot copy.

Best-of balloting of this sort turns an audience's daily habits into a ranking. Regulars who grab lunch, shop or book services inside the coverage area become the electorate, and the businesses that win earn a form of publicity the station itself broadcasts. The page frames the stakes in exactly those terms, urging people to support local businesses, restaurants, and services while the window is open.

Which dates shape the 2026 ballot?

Nominations came first. The station accepted nominee suggestions through February 6, 2026, on a dedicated nominations page for the cycle, and told readers there that voting would take place in each category starting on February 9. The ballot page then confirmed the second half of the schedule: voting is open now through February 20, giving supporters the chance to choose the best local businesses in each category.

The outcome moves to the airwaves once the vote shuts. The page instructs supporters to listen to this Townsquare Media station the week of March 2nd to see who won in each category, so the reveal is a broadcast moment rather than a quiet web update. The site also carries a roundup headed 2026 Winners of the Townsquare Media Listeners' Choice Awards, confirming that the cycle produced a published result.

On longevity, 2026 is the only edition confirmed for the programme. This is the first confirmed edition; whether it returns next year is not yet published; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Nothing on the site promises a further round, so a business hoping to compete again should watch the station's pages instead of assuming a slot.

Two aspects of the rules stay open. The station has published neither the category lineup nor any repeat-voting rule alongside the ballot; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Eligibility wording for nominees and voters is absent from the material as well, so a business wondering whether it may enter has nothing in print to consult.

How does a supporter vote in the KICK FM listeners' poll?

Nothing about the KICK FM process demands much from a listener. Reaching the vote means typing https://979kickfm.com/vote-townsquare-media-listener-awards/ into a browser, scanning whichever category list the page carries, and marking a preferred local business in every line-up shown. Because everything runs on the station's own site, there is no separate polling service to visit and no results portal to hunt down: the address that carries the vote also carries whatever the station publishes afterwards.

The ballot behaves like any web form, so it opens in a phone browser as readily as on a laptop, and listeners can take part wherever they normally stream or tune in. The station promotes a free mobile app across its pages, yet the vote itself is reached through the website rather than an app-store download. Nothing published for this cycle instructs voters to create a profile, and nothing describes a waiting period between submissions; the request is simply to back favorites before the February 20 close. Voting costs nothing, and no purchase is mentioned anywhere on the page.

Arriving at the right moment mattered in 2026. Voting in each category ran from February 9, so anyone visiting the address during that stretch saw the full live ballot, while the weeks beforehand belonged to the nomination phase at a different page on the same domain.

A practical closing note: the deadline is the firm edge of the process. Picks submitted before February 20, 2026 count toward a category's outcome; anything later waits on a future round that Townsquare Media has yet to announce.

Where does this ballot sit among Illinois vote-now programmes?

Illinois carries a crowded shelf of public best-of ballots, and this one stands apart by belonging to a radio group. On this site's Illinois pages the nearest neighbours include a homebuilders' event whose People's Choice vote goes by the name BAGI Parade of Homes, the Sauk Valley Favorites poll serving Sterling, Best of Chicago from the Chicago Reader, Chicago Style Weddings Best Of, and the CommunityVotes ballots for Peoria IL and Rockford. Each answers to a different kind of host: a parade organizer, a regional favorites publisher, two city publication franchises and two citywide community-vote brands.

The KICK FM award differs from that pack in its host, its market and its payoff. The host is a broadcaster, so recognition arrives as airtime: winners are read on the station during the week of March 2nd instead of appearing in a magazine spread. The market is the area the ballot brands the Best of the Tri-State Area, tied to a Quincy, Illinois signal, rather than a single large city or the whole state. And the subject is the everyday business scene of restaurants, shops and service providers, without the homes, weddings or big-city dining angles its neighbours chase.

For a voter, that shifts the feel of taking part. Backing a favorite here doubles as backing a station already woven into the day, and the verdict comes back through the same speakers that promoted the vote. For a business, winning amounts to an endorsement broadcast by a media company with reach across its customer base.

How can a business rally support before the February 20 close?

A push for the Listeners' Choice crown has to fit the schedule the station set: category voting ran from February 9 and stopped on February 20, so every reminder, share and counter-ask had to land inside that stretch. The most natural moves follow the ballot's own shape. Ask regular customers to open the ballot address and select the business in the category where it belongs, repeat the ask while the window is live, and lean on the channels the business already controls, from receipts to social posts.

The station has published no guidance on outside help or purchased support for this programme, so a business weighing that route should start from the organizer's own wording and from general references such as our guide to getting more votes online and the award votes page. Whichever method a campaign chooses, the decisive variable stays the same: reaching enough real supporters before the closing date the ballot fixes.