Ellen K from KOST and a Disneyland Rep were just on KTLA announcing Holiday plans for both the upcoming flip to all Christmas music and the private listener/IHeart Employee party on Dec. 6 at California Adventure. The time of said music flip is "under wraps" but Gwen Stefani is scheduled to be Ellen K's guest that morning; Disneylsnd Resort starts it's "Holiday Time" at 8am same day.....you make your own best guess 😋
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KOST Goes All Christmas Friday
- Thread starter CaliRadioFan
- Start date
It's still too early!!!
Wait until after Thanksgiving please!!!
The advertisers can't wait, nor can the target demographic -- female 25-54.
The numbers don't lie. When stations flip to Christmas, people who don't listen to those stations much the rest of the year make them their only choice through late December. So far, radio has not found a date that's "too early," that is, one that will drive off more listeners than it will gain. It's hard for most on this board to fathom because many of us are 55+ males and avid fans of particular stations or particular musical genres -- precisely to kind of people the all-Christmas format is not trying to reach, nor does it want to reach.
The December ratings book begins on Thursday in PPM markets. I suspect we'll see quite a few flips to All-Santa this week in the PPM markets.
Looks like KOST 103.5 wants to get their #1 rating spot early this year...
I wonder just how many Christmas tunes KOST will actually play...
It doesn't take many to keep the format's fans satisfied. WRCH Hartford plays between 200 and 250 songs for a month and a half and mops the floor with its non-Christmas competition. WDRC-FM, back in its oldies days, tried to challenge WRCH with a deeper, gold-based Christmas format one year. It was a disaster. I believe they actually lost listeners that month.
My family can wait, no need to hear Christmas music this early. I agree with ATSF. After Thanksgiving is when our own playlist of Christmas songs fires up (especially from Dec. 15th onward)......and no annoying commercials, thank God.
Personally, I have about 180, mostly the true classics that many stations sideswipe these days.
Do these include non-secular tunes, like "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen", "Silent Night"......etc?
It includes the songs that have consensus appeal to listeners, secular or non-secular.
Just like every year, you can expect lots of songs about sleigh bells, winter wonderlands and Santas, but you will be waiting a long time to hear "Silent Night". I am not a very religious person myself, but I still find it so disgraceful that every year their goal seems to be to find more ways to take the Christ out of Christmas. They succeed tremendously.
How would you feel if you found out the recording industry and artists are recording more secular songs for Christmas albums than religious ones?
Next time you get a chance, look at the song lists on the new Christmas albums.
>>>>You will be waiting a long time to hear "Silent Night". I am not a very religious person myself, but I still find it so disgraceful that every year their goal seems to be to find more ways to take the Christ out of Christmas.<<<<
This actually is not true, as far as radio is concerned. The rule used to be that you NEVER played a religious Christmas song before Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Radio only played secular Christmas music leading up to the holiday and you only broke out the "Silent Night" and "O Holy Night" for Dec. 24 and 25.
But in 1987, the album "A Very Special Christmas" came out, to benefit Special Olympics. A number of big stars contributed religious Christmas songs. Stevie Nicks (Silent Night), Sting (Gabriel's Message) and Alison Moyet (The Coventry Carol) all recorded hymns. My guess is the artists simply chose songs they liked themselves and the producers of the LP didn't say no. Radio decided it couldn't ignore those songs. And the "No Religious Christmas Music till Dec. 24" rule went out the window.
So today, when stations go all-Christmas in mid-November, religious songs are in the mix, be it iHeart, Cumulus, Entercom, Cox or anyone else. Maybe ChannelFlipper would like to see a higher percentage of religious songs. But there are hymns in the mix as soon as the All-Christmas format begins.
This actually is not true, as far as radio is concerned. The rule used to be that you NEVER played a religious Christmas song before Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Radio only played secular Christmas music leading up to the holiday and you only broke out the "Silent Night" and "O Holy Night" for Dec. 24 and 25.
But in 1987, the album "A Very Special Christmas" came out, to benefit Special Olympics. A number of big stars contributed religious Christmas songs. Stevie Nicks (Silent Night), Sting (Gabriel's Message) and Alison Moyet (The Coventry Carol) all recorded hymns. My guess is the artists simply chose songs they liked themselves and the producers of the LP didn't say no. Radio decided it couldn't ignore those songs. And the "No Religious Christmas Music till Dec. 24" rule went out the window.
So today, when stations go all-Christmas in mid-November, religious songs are in the mix, be it iHeart, Cumulus, Entercom, Cox or anyone else. Maybe ChannelFlipper would like to see a higher percentage of religious songs. But there are hymns in the mix as soon as the All-Christmas format begins.
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And even stations whose Christmas playlists don't include hymns still play "Little Drummer Boy" and "Do You Hear What I Hear." Even "Mary's Boy Child" falls into the religious category.
Would be nice if the regular KOST format transitioned during this 6-week period to an HD side channel on 103.5. For example, Saul Levine noted in Don Barrett's column last Saturday how his 105.1 HD3 would initially be going all-Christmas. Given the influx of Christmas music on KOST, and often on KTWV and KRTH and KKGO, there is nowhere left for an adult contemporary music listener to go locally on terrestrial radio. In fact, nationwide it seems that AC stations are most prone to flip to all-Christmas leaving this particular music audience in the lurch. If these stations can temporarily move their AC format to one of their side channels, even if automated since the DJs remain on the main channel, it would presumably attract an audience that could continue to be served by advertising. In fact, it would justify even higher advertising rates, as buyers on the main channel could be told they will be buying both the HD1 and HDx formats combined.
This would actually be more in line of how I would present it also. I mean, Christmas Eve is the holiest night of that season, so might as well play the music that's appropriate for that magical evening. Why not.
Heck, I'd even do some well-knowns from the Vienna, Mormon and those symphony choirs late that evening. Call me old-fashioned, but it works!
Which ties in to the "Happy Holiday" / "Merry Christmas" debate, but that's separate issue in itself. But I think newer artists are doing the religious ones. Pentatonix had one a few years back...."Mary, Did You Know" which aired briefly. Personally, I don't listen to the radio a whole lot for Christmas music and certainly not before Thanksgiving Day. I have my own playlist which I put on Dec. 24th,
5pm-1am, mostly classics and some religious and choir mixed in.
It is entirely possible that labels encourage artists to record secular songs because overly religious songs are relegated to very limited airplay and thus exposure. It is possible the artists already know this and don't need to be told. It is possible the artists today have grown up in the last twenty years where a secularist approach to Christmas has been the norm, so they have no interest in any religious songs. It is probably a combination of all of these reasons and I am sure more than these ones. Look, this is not my signature issue so I don't want to make it a bigger deal than it is (to me anyway). Most of my favorite Christmas songs are Bob Rivers parody songs, to give you an idea where I am coming from.
I do take issue with the idea that radio doesn't play these religious songs because no one wants to hear them before 12/24, but they want to hear "Winter Wonderland" for eight weeks straight. That doesn't pass the smell, sanity, or any other common sense test. What is more likely is that, as a group, radio programmers and others in management that are very secular themselves have a natural (to them) aversion to playing the religious tracks.
Now, I can hear the howls of righteous indignation from our pros who will swear that radio only gives listeners what they want (and omits what they don't want) and we programmers are completely neutral about it. Sorry guys, that may be true some of the time, maybe even most of the time, but not all of the time. To say that editorial decisions are not made about what us mere listeners can and should be subject to are made all of the time. I will have more to say about this topic of radio programming/editorializing later in a more topic-focused post, perhaps in a new thread to give it the space it deserves.
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