Given that retail advertising makes up the majority (and in some cases, the vast majority) of revenues for most music-formatted stations, I can see retail advertisers and their ad agencies exerting big-time pressure on radio this year (2022) to start programming Christmas music earlier than in the past and to persuade more stations to go all-Christmas.
Retailers and their ad agencies would have good reasons to persuade/pressure radio to start all-Christmas formats earlier than in previous years: They may be afraid of a disastrous Holiday shopping season given the war in Ukraine, high inflation, fears of a major global recession, continuing fallout over Covid-19 and fears of major outbreaks of flu as well as RSV and maybe even measles among children, possible energy shortages (especially home heating oil here in New England), a brutally nasty midterm election campaign, and general uneasiness. With all that going on, retailers might be running scared. And if they are running scared, they might tell radio to start pumping Christmas music earlier and on more stations than in the past. One effect of Christmas music on radio is to subconsciously tell listeners to "Get your Christmas shopping done!".
Although some think the big wave of all-Christmas flips might not come until two weeks from today (which will be Wednesday, November 9th, the day after the midterm elections), I don't think the industry will want to wait that long.
Last year (2021), most I-Heart stations that flipped to 24/7 Christmas music did so on the first Friday of November (which was November 5th). If the company were to again flip most or all of their stations that will go all-Christmas on the first Friday of November this year, it would be November 4th----four days before the midterms.
But I wouldn't be surprised that if I-Heart again has a coordinated flip of stations to all-Christmas formats, and that every I-Heart station going all-Christmas does so at the same time, and that the time may be a few days earlier than 2021: This coming Tuesday, November 1st.
This may trigger stations owned by other companies in markets that have an I-Heart-owned all-Christmas stations that plan to go all-Christmas to do so ASAP after the I-Heart station does so. As an example, let's say that in Market "X", both I-Heart's WYY and Audacy's WZZ plan to go all-Christmas at some point during the season.
Furthermore, let's assume that WYY, along with nearly 90 other I-Heart stations (that's the number of I-Heart stations that took part in last year's coordinated flip), takes the plunge at 9 A.M. local time on November 1st. WZZ, finding out at 9:01 A.M. that they were "beaten to the punch", probably wouldn't wait until whatever day and time they planned to flip. WZZ would probably follow suit within minutes. So within a stretch of less than ten minutes, probably less than five minutes, Market "X" has two all-Christmas stations programmed Holiday music for 55 days.
Even if WYY's flip were later than November 1st, WZZ would quickly follow if WYY was first. If WZZ was first, WYY would follow quickly. This pattern has played itself out in markets with multiple all-Christmas stations. And this year, for the reasons I outlined in the first two paragraphs of my response, I think you may see multiple all-Christmas stations this year in just about every medium, large, and major market.
As for concerns some have about political ads (especially attack ads) sharing the airwaves of the same station with Christmas music: Most political advertising on radio seems to go to all-news, news/talk, or all-talk stations (although with so much money being spent on political ads this year, some nasty attack ads could appear on music stations), so I doubt that Christmas music would be interspersed with political ads during the first week of November in most areas.