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Christmas in Atlanta?

jabba17

jabba17

A lot of stations have already gone all-Christmas, in markets of all sizes

https://www.allaccess.com/net-news/archive/story/201837/the-christmas-rush-continues-at-radio

Would any Atlanta stations be a candidate to go all-Christmas? I know B gave it up (I know why), and there really isn't any other obvious choice besides Fish. Would Cumulus flip one of their translators (looking at you, 98.9) like they did before (again, looking at you, 98.9)? Would a low-performing full-power station do it such as 101.5 or 94.1?

Yes, it may be early, but Thanksgiving is almost here and people are begging for some holiday cheer for a rotten year.
 
jabba17 said:
Yes, it may be early, but Thanksgiving is almost here and people are begging for some holiday cheer for a rotten year.
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Typically going all-Christmas helps AC stations. But when stations outside that format try Christmas, it doesn't always get positive results.

Two examples: Philly's classic hits WOGL went Christmas one year, and it was a bust. LA's country KKGO regularly flips to Christmas after Thanksgiving, and basically stays flat.
 
It is odd that Atlanta is the only large market where a secular station doesn't go All-Christmas. Only Christian Contemporary WFSH flips. Miami had been another market until a couple of years ago when its AC station, WLYF, began doing it.

Why is Atlanta a hold-out? Especially since some markets have two stations that flip each year. Beats me. I'm sure WSB-FM considers it and then passes. Yet co-owned WDUV Tampa and WEZI Jacksonville both do it.
 
Translator 102.1 "The King" has been all Christmas for about a week now.
 
Gregg. said:
It is odd that Atlanta is the only large market where a secular station doesn't go All-Christmas. Only Christian Contemporary WFSH flips. Miami had been another market until a couple of years ago when its AC station, WLYF, began doing it.

Why is Atlanta a hold-out? Especially since some markets have two stations that flip each year. Beats me. I'm sure WSB-FM considers it and then passes. Yet co-owned WDUV Tampa and WEZI Jacksonville both do it.
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It might be the “average” temperature in Atlanta. Since many of the secular Christmas Songs have snow as an underlying theme it might be hard to dream of a “White Christmas” when the house AC is running and you are still mowing the yard. I have lived up north and after a couple of several weeks or months of “gray” a snow covering was nice until you have to shovel or drive in it.

Florida is not known for "winter weather" so IMHO Christmas is strictly "mental" with no need for a "break" from the "gray".


IIRC didn't 94.9 Peach or Lite flip to the Bull during Christmas music? I always though that was odd.
 
Gregg. said:
It is odd that Atlanta is the only large market where a secular station doesn't go All-Christmas. Only Christian Contemporary WFSH flips. Miami had been another market until a couple of years ago when its AC station, WLYF, began doing it.

Why is Atlanta a hold-out? Especially since some markets have two stations that flip each year. Beats me. I'm sure WSB-FM considers it and then passes. Yet co-owned WDUV Tampa and WEZI Jacksonville both do it.
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WSB-FM used to do it every year when they were more mainstream AC and not Hot AC, and also had soft AC competition from Peach 94.9.

To answer PowerCow's question as well, B98.5 quit doing it when they started losing more of their new Hot AC listeners to Q100/99.7, Star, and Power 96, and not getting them back quickly after the holidays. To put it another way, when B98.5 was mainstream AC, it was more of a natural fit. Not so much when they went Hot AC and started competing more with CHRs and not smooth jazz and soft AC stations.
 
secondchoice said:
IIRC didn't 94.9 Peach or Lite flip to the Bull during Christmas music? I always though that was odd.
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They sure did, I think it was the weekend before Christmas that year. That was really odd. Why not wait a week?

What made more sense was Cumulus putting all-Christmas on 98.9 under the guise of "Warm 98.9". Both a Christmas sell and a soft AC headfake. It flipped to the latest iteration of 99X after Christmas.
 
Christmas on HD

Well K love is airing Christmas music on 106.7 HD3 with the demise of Klove classics. I wish that modern gospel format on 102.1 would have been able to last but thank God 93.3 HD3 is LF radio. I also home the Fish will run a normal music mix on 104.7 HD2 again this year. Im one of those rare Christians that hates most Christmas music but contemporary Christian all the way otherwise.
 
Is Atlanta a market that's too warm for Xmas music? No. There is no place too warm for holiday hits. The all-Christmas format supposedly started on KESZ, an AC station in Phoenix. The station that goes all-Christmas is usually #1 in Tampa, Orlando, Houston, San Diego, Las Vegas, Honolulu, Tuscon and Phoenix. Atlanta isn't warmer than those places.

Is WSB-FM too hot as an AC station? Maybe that's a theory, as someone said above. Management is worried even if the station goes to #1 during the holidays, younger listeners will have relocated someplace else and not be around for the ratings in January? Well, usually in December, the station that goes all-Christmas is #1, not just among 25-54 and 25-49 demos but EVEN 18-34. Really. And there are Hot AC stations that make the switch to Christmas music, such as WALK-FM Long Island and WMYX Milwaukee. In markets with no AC station, such as Minneapolis, someone else does it, such as Classic Hits KQQL. But Atlanta doesn't really have a Classic Hits station either.

So I guess as tempting as it may be, Atlanta remains the only sizable market where no non-religious station plays all Christmas music.
 
Gregg. said:
It is odd that Atlanta is the only large market where a secular station doesn't go All-Christmas. Only Christian Contemporary WFSH flips. Miami had been another market until a couple of years ago when its AC station, WLYF, began doing it.

Why is Atlanta a hold-out? Especially since some markets have two stations that flip each year. Beats me. I'm sure WSB-FM considers it and then passes. Yet co-owned WDUV Tampa and WEZI Jacksonville both do it.
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Last year in a surprise move, Star 94 went all Christmas and got some pretty good numbers.

This year I doubt they'll do it because they're trying to establish a new format.
 
jabba17 said:
They sure did, I think it was the weekend before Christmas that year. That was really odd. Why not wait a week?

What made more sense was Cumulus putting all-Christmas on 98.9 under the guise of "Warm 98.9". Both a Christmas sell and a soft AC headfake. It flipped to the latest iteration of 99X after Christmas.
Click to expand...

I remember it was December 18th, 2006, exactly one week before Christmas, when 94.9 Lite-FM flipped to the Bull. The station probably thought switching at that time would draw the most attention to their format flip. At the same time, the little 96.7 signal flipped to AC 96.7 Lite FM for exactly 1 year.

But it is true - other markets have jumped over to Christmas earlier this year. I just drove home through Alabama and their AC "Magic 96.5" already flipped and was playing a Christmas version of the Delilah Radio Show - which incidentally has not aired in this market since 2012. Birmingham is just as much of a southern market as Atlanta yet they have had all-Christmas stations every year for as long as I can remember - and I drive through there at least once a year during the holiday season. So the 'snow imagery' theory mentioned above does not really apply. (They play Christmas songs in Australia BTW.)

I still wonder if 94.1 will flip, but somehow I do not see that happening this year with their shiny new format they are trying to showcase right now.

With the lack of Ho-Ho-Holiday tunes in the A-T-L, I will be relegated to enjoying SXM's selection of Christmas stations. With the all-out war over Hot-AC, the ATL will likely remain a soft-AC desert for years to come.
 
While listening to 99X’s translator on 98.9, I occasionally hear WSPA fighting over it with Christmas music. Especially during the heavy tropo morning/evening hours.
 
I think one of the reasons there isn't a class C station flipping to all-Christmas is that the programming decisions are increasingly being made by clueless corporate management. If they looked at the numbers Peach/Lite-FM got with their well curated mix, they'd know it would work. All of the credit for the playlist went to Jim Hutto and Steve Goss. Steve made sure tracks like The Train (Celestial Navigations) and Once Upon a Christmas Tree (Cy Timmons) were in the mix and the crappy covers that B98 played were kept out. Admittedly, this was decades ago and the audience has changed, but I'd love to see someone try it.
 
In spite of their new format, Star has been airing All-Christmas weekends. It will be interesting if they leave it all-holiday tunes this final week before the big day. Considering no other station in ATL besides FISH is doing so, they might.
 
Lotologist492 said:
In spite of their new format, Star has been airing All-Christmas weekends. It will be interesting if they leave it all-holiday tunes this final week before the big day. Considering no other station in ATL besides FISH is doing so, they might.
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They can't go all-Christmas during the week because they're trying to establish their new format. They've been using the all-Christmas weekends to heavily promote the new format to people who come for the Christmas music.
 
For those of you who are still in the mood, WAZX (1550) the big X, is STILL playing Christmas music. Guess they had a little too much eggnog to drink.
 
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