Christmas Is Here

[Freqman]

Star has made it's annual flip to Christmas music as of about 7am this morning. Considering I had to scrape the truck before work it didn't feel so out of place, but it still seems too early.

Weirdly enough when I flipped over to the River they were playing Ghostbusters? Are we still doing Halloween on the River or did corporate send the wrong music?

[Graham Wellington]

Get ready for the 65 year old men on this board who never listen to 105.7 complain about the switch to Christmas music.

[The Painted Horse]

Umm…62. Thank you very much.

[teetoppz28]

The wife has already made the switch on our radios throughout the house and cars...

[Frosty]

64 here. Not ready for it until the week before Christmas. Until then: Bah-hum-bug.

[ChrisWL1980]

With their ratings woes of late, I saw this coming.
The only thing worse than Christmas music on November 1 is Christmas music pitched up on November 1. The "hippo song" and "Grandma Got Run Over" are bad enough as it is. (43, BTW, and an AC enthusiast.)

[Feature/writer]

I believe WMJJ in Birmingham, Ala. was the first in the country to flip to Xmas. (Oct. 25)! There must be a year-round Xmas station somewhere......

[teetoppz28]

I believe WMJJ in Birmingham, Ala. was the first in the country to flip to Xmas. (Oct. 25)! There must be a year-round Xmas station somewhere......

Terrestrial radio? Probably not. But there definitely are streaming channels that play Christmas music 24/7/365...

Oh god, that would be awful to DJ!

[A1B1C1D1]

People complain about low rating stations that do nothing to improve their ratings, then they complain about stations that change to improve their ratings!

In a literal sense, Advent comes before Christmas and no artist makes an Advent album. Instead all these artists (William Shatner - not Christian, Seth MacFarlane - irreligious) make millions and claim to have had fun making Christmas albums in their style.

If you want to confuse people who say 'Merry Christmas' in mid-December, simply wish them a 'Happy Advent' and take satisfaction that the twelve days of Christmas start on Christmas and do not lead up to it.

[GnashManDu]

This early launch isn't too surprising as the ratings on Star have been in the toilet and really haven't been consistent in years. The problem is that even if they get a ratings bump, they haven't shown an ability to sustain it.

AC radio does not have a passionate audience, and without PPM you're asking a lot of work from diary keepers who stumble into it in office settings.

[teetoppz28]

The River 100.5 flipped today too. Janice from Fox17 did the honors.

[ral315]

People complain about low rating stations that do nothing to improve their ratings, then they complain about stations that change to improve their ratings!

It's a good move for them, but it's a polarizing one, obviously. I think the biggest criticism I have of Christmas stations is that their playlists are incredibly shallow. Everyone on this board complains about stale playlists on rock, AC, country stations - but Christmas is ten times worse.

Some of that is unavoidable, because there aren't many Christmas classics, and everyone wants to hear their favorite song. But in the last twelve hours, 105.7 played "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" six times. Three of those were Dean Martin, the other three were Aaron Neville, Harry Connick Jr. and Andy Williams. They played Mariah Carey 7 times in the last 12 hours - surprisingly, only two of those were "All I Want for Christmas Is You". They played Ray Conniff's "Ring Christmas Bells" every four hours, almost like clockwork.

It's not fun to sit in a workplace that plays songs that you don't like. But when you know you're going to hear that song 2-5 times a day, every day, for the next 8 weeks, it's easy to get jaded about Christmas music.

[Trophyhead]

If I am tuned to a Christmas station, I want to hear Ray Conniff's "Ring Christmas Bells," so good on that. Once. Typically, my exposure to the format is via Zoomer Radio out of Toronto, in an earliest hours of Christmas Day cross-state trip.

Worked a small market station where we sprinkled Christmas music lightly after Thanksgiving, growing the spins very gradually to the point where it was almost all Christmas about the 23rd. There were locally produced High School concerts to run, etc. the 24th and 25th and it slipped away quickly after the holiday. Guess that notion doesn't work in the big city.

[OneBigFan]

Might be 20+ years ago stations would start going to their Christmas music programming on Black Friday. I was a sales road warrior and listened to a lot of radio but could understand the timing.

Like some others have stated, the move to November 1 by 105.7 that has been struggling for ratings for a few years makes sense. 100.5 must have looked at their demographics, location on the search and figure if listeners seeking holiday music hit their station first they’ll stop before moving up the dial.