The short answer
The Athletic, 1 Oct 2025 to 30 Sep 2026
15 push notifications on a typical active day (median; the mean is 14.8). Over the last twelve months The Athletic sent 3,918 notifications, pushing on 265 of 365 days. Its busiest hour is 05:00 local time, and its biggest single day was 2026-09-01, with 74 pushes.
The daily clock
All of The Athletic's pushes from the last twelve months, on United States's clock. The red bar is the busiest hour, 05:00.
The Athleticpeak 05:0033.8% of The Athletic's notifications land between 22:00 and 07:00. For when the whole country's apps push, and the quiet windows between them, see the United States timing guide.
The week
An average weekday carries 14.9 The Athletic pushes and a weekend day 14.5: the newsroom audibly thins out on Saturdays.
How The Athletic writes a push
| Habit | The Athletic | United States median |
|---|---|---|
| Title length (median characters) | 26 | 13 |
| Body text length (median characters) | 81 | 85 |
| Pushes with no title at all | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Contains an emoji | 7.3% | 0.0% |
| Contains an exclamation mark | 0.1% | 0.2% |
| Phrased as a question | 20.4% | 4.9% |
Aggregates over every The Athletic notification in the window. The norms across all newsrooms, and which countries love emoji, are in how newsrooms write push notifications.
Versus other United States apps
Every United States news app in the dataset, ranked by twelve-month push volume. The Athletic is highlighted.
| # | App | Pushes / 12 mo | Per active day | Peak hour |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Breaking News | 18,472 | 45.0 | 14:00 |
| 2 |  NYPost | 4,842 | 13 | 11:00 |
| 3 |  SCMP | 4,802 | 28.5 | 07:00 |
| 4 | The Athletic | 3,918 | 15 | 05:00 |
| 5 |  AP News | 3,207 | 9.0 | 10:00 |
| 6 |  Mercury News | 2,877 | 8.0 | 11:00 |
| 7 |  AOL | 2,153 | 6.0 | 08:00 |
| 8 |  ABC13 | 1,970 | 5.0 | 08:00 |
| 9 |  Bloomberg | 1,650 | 5.0 | 11:00 |
| 10 |  NBC NEWS | 1,618 | 7 | 07:00 |
| 11 |  Washington Post | 1,560 | 5.0 | 18:00 |
| 12 |  HuffPost | 1,559 | 11 | 11:00 |
| 13 |  Epoch Times | 1,485 | 7 | 08:00 |
| 14 |  NYTimes | 1,419 | 4 | 01:00 |
| 15 |  NPR | 1,370 | 6.0 | 14:00 |
| 16 |  TribLive | 1,338 | 9 | 09:00 |
| 17 |  CBS News | 1,271 | 8 | 15:00 |
| 18 |  BBC | 1,181 | 3 | 07:00 |
| 19 |  POLITICO | 1,121 | 5.0 | 12:00 |
| 20 |  CNBC | 1,008 | 3.5 | 16:00 |
| 21 |  Seattle Times Mobile | 964 | 5.0 | 13:00 |
| 22 |  St. Louis Post-Dispatch | 843 | 9 | 09:00 |
| 23 |  ABC News | 842 | 4.0 | 15:00 |
| 24 |  Philly Inquirer | 697 | 5 | 18:00 |
| 25 |  WSJ | 688 | 4.0 | 21:00 |
| 26 |  OREGONLIVE | 661 | 5 | 11:00 |
| 27 |  The Sacramento Bee | 601 | 4 | 11:00 |
| 28 |  ABC7LA | 570 | 4.0 | 01:00 |
| 29 |  Syracuse.com | 507 | 3 | 07:00 |
| 30 |  The Charlotte Observer | 493 | 4 | 11:00 |
| 31 |  Honolulu Star-Advertiser | 469 | 3 | 13:00 |
| 32 |  Reuters | 435 | 3.0 | 08:00 |
| 33 |  Newsmax | 424 | 3.0 | 10:00 |
| 34 |  The Kansas City Star | 403 | 3 | 11:00 |
| 35 |  The Atlantic | 388 | 2.0 | 12:00 |
| 36 |  Arkansas Online-The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette | 328 | 2 | 10:00 |
| 37 |  HBR | 224 | 2.0 | 10:00 |
| 38 |  The Fresno Bee | 214 | 3 | 16:00 |
| 39 |  Lexington Herald-Leader | 212 | 2.0 | 15:00 |
| 40 |  The State | 183 | 2.0 | 09:00 |
| 41 |  inkl news | 170 | 1.0 | 01:00 |
| 42 |  FOX 17 News | 122 | 2.0 | 14:00 |
| 43 |  Cleveland.com | 105 | 1.0 | 11:00 |
Method
AO.news collects the push notifications of hundreds of news apps as they are delivered, and records each one the moment it lands. This page counts the 3,918 notifications The Athletic sent from 1 Oct 2025 to 30 Sep 2026, stamped in America/New_York local time. Front-page headline robots are excluded, and the window always ends at the last complete month, so these figures update monthly rather than live. Two honest caveats: an app added mid-window shows artificially quiet early months, and a push sent only to a personalised or regional segment may not reach us. This page shows aggregates only, never the notifications themselves; the live stream is in the deck.