Hiccup in the automation?
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Christmas Music/Format Change Watch 2022
- Thread starter MegaBlue
- Start date
WAKR is now all-Christmas outside of the morning show and sporting events.
It seems like everyone's learned the scheduling tactics at 102 and have adjusted their own plans accordingly, making 102 - usually, one of the first to flip to all-Christmas - now one of the LAST to do so. It's going to be interesting to see how the ratings play out, but it's a shame that there aren't weekly releases to track how Christmas flips affected everyone's audiences.
Also, is Acoustic Sunrise on hold again this year, or did Audacy put out a special Christmas-themed version that stations can play on Sunday mornings until the season ends?
Now 102 will say "A-HA! We'll outsmart then next year. We'll flip to Christmas on the day the temp hits 95 degrees!"
It'd be incredible if they eased into it and sprinkled the occasional Christmas song in here and there in, like, September. Find some innocuous one that doesn't scream "Christmas music" but still fits in with the season, like "Lover" by Taylor Swift and Shawn Mendes (the first line is "we can leave the Christmas lights up 'til January"), or "Snow Angel" by Little-T and One Track Mike. Maybe do a random block of Christmas music at 3am as October rolls in, and - while promoting the switch to happen on a random day in November - just flip the switch at midnight on November 1 to straight-up 24/7 Christmas music.
Although, if 102 flipped to Christmas for the whole month of July, would any of us really complain? Maybe they could make it a new annual tradition. "Christmas in July" is a thing, so why not run with it?
That would be nice as of now, and flip to 24/7 Christmas music sometime during the first full week of December.
They used to do that on July 25 when they were still Soft Rock 102.1. That eventually went away after they became New/Star 102.
There are literally stations online [guess they can't really be called "radio" stations] that run Christmas music 24/7 365 days a year. I know of at least two but don't ask me what their URL is.
I mean, with the major players, you can get instant access to any kind of music you want on an automated playlist type of stream, but there's not that organic feel of a personally curated playlist or a special occasion, y'know? Sure, WKDD's all-holidays '90s weekends are a nice change of pace - and, yes, I could just turn on iHeart 90s at any time to hear the same music - but the holiday-specific streamers' stations are just loosely-associated songs there to fill out a playlist. The Halloween stations, in particular, feature the most random songs. I know you only have so many options, but "Toxic" hardly counts as a Halloween song.
I didn't go nuts on Christmas music until the early 2000s, when I was working in our store's Electronics section over the holidays (to boost sales, they'd station somewhat-knowledgeable people there to help move merch, and I won out) and spent time just staring at the CDs and picking up a couple. That snowballed into buying up a bunch of Christmas CDs and ripping them into Windows Media Player, and that later snowballed into iTunes playlists. I've got a little of everything - from mainstays like Mariah Carey to eccentric tracks like the barking dogs' Jingle Bells and the Macarena Christmas - which is partly why Christmas is my favorite time of the year.
I didn't go nuts on Christmas music until the early 2000s, when I was working in our store's Electronics section over the holidays (to boost sales, they'd station somewhat-knowledgeable people there to help move merch, and I won out) and spent time just staring at the CDs and picking up a couple. That snowballed into buying up a bunch of Christmas CDs and ripping them into Windows Media Player, and that later snowballed into iTunes playlists. I've got a little of everything - from mainstays like Mariah Carey to eccentric tracks like the barking dogs' Jingle Bells and the Macarena Christmas - which is partly why Christmas is my favorite time of the year.
95.5 The Fish is now all-Christmas as of this past Friday.
I was going to ask "What exactly is considered normal?"
If I'm a local disc jockey at any of these stations, I'm more wondering if I have a job come January 1st.
If I remember right, that's when WMVX reformatted to "The Lake" and let all of their disc jockeys go. I don't think WMJI carried Christmas Music until the next year when it took over WMVX's role in the "Clear Channel/IHeart", Cleveland group...
Well, for WMJI, it's back to Piano Man, Hotel California, Bohemian Rhapsody, Jack & Diane, Eye of the Tiger, etc. ad nauseam.I was going to ask "What exactly is considered normal?"
Majic, Star and The Fish have been doing this for more than a decade. They aren't going anywhere after this weekend. The 2010 Mix to Christmas to Mix to stunting was the exception rather than the rule.
Well, it was nice to hear music again on 640 AM WHLO, even though it was Christmas music. They ended it at midnight with Mariah Scarey's "All I Want For Christmas", I guess in an attempt to drive whatever listener [s?} was left away. Then it was right back to the same talk crap that you can hear on almost all their AM stations.
No, the fact that they [for now] seem to be playing music on holiday weekends is great rather them playing the same talk shows repeating the same points over and over and over is wonderful.
It's also nice to hear some holiday music after Dec. 25th like WKHR does mixing some holiday tracks with the regular ones.
There are several winter songs not specific to Christmas that can still be played - Winter Wonderland, Sleigh Ride, Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Frosty the Snowman, etc.
Don't forget the very entertaining "Mr. Heatmiser" by the modern Big Band, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.
It doesn't matter if it's specifically Christmas music since some people of other faiths like Orthodox celebrate at a later time which is Jan, 7th 2023.