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Christmas Music
- Thread starter A_b_m_90
- Start date
Already do. 104.7 is all Christmas music on HD1
For many years now, 104.7 The Fish has gone 100% Christmas, and B98.5 does a partially-Christmas format.
Not seeing any reason that would change this year.
Probably in some aspects but, almost every AC, in both medium and major markets have gone all Christmas... since the second week of November. So apparently it's still extremely popular over the airwaves.
Atlanta has always been a strange market for some reason. I don't understand why we don't have a real, true "Lite" station here, we don't have a true classic hits station, and CHR/Top 40 has honestly never really performed all that well here either (not counting the present moment, as top 40 is down everywhere right now).
Atlanta has always been a strange market for some reason. I don't understand why we don't have a real, true "Lite" station here, we don't have a true classic hits station, and CHR/Top 40 has honestly never really performed all that well here either (not counting the present moment, as top 40 is down everywhere right now).
Yep, it's strange on many levels. Going back to the 70's and 80's we had the reputation of being a major market with mediocre programming. IMHO, Atlanta's best music stations were blown up and replaced with generic crap. There used to be stations that felt like Atlanta, like V-103, 96Rock and Fox 97, with talent who grew up here.
For the last time ATL had a real powerhouse CHR, you'd have to go back to the pre-1980-81 Top 40 doldrums Z-93 or even farther back into the 70s with Quixie (WQXI 790). Z-93 was getting a double-digit share (albeit with much less competition across the dial) before the doldrums hit, and then MTV changed everything and Z-93 was never the same again.
Even Power 99 wasn't as big as Z-93 in its heyday.
The conventional wisdom about CHR is that ATL has strong competition from urban stations siphoning off potential CHR/R listeners.
I don't know why we don't have a soft AC or a true classic hits station either, although there are a number of HD subchannel and rimshot players doing classic hits of some sort, like WRAS HD3, WSB-FM HD2, Chuck FM 103.7, WBCX 89.1, and the Fox FM stations, among others.
I don't know if it would be the best move financially, but if iHeart brought back 96 Rock as a true classic rocker, it might move River more in a classic hits direction. Cumulus tried that with Rock 100.5, but that never did the job, so maybe not.
I have often wondered the same thing, but in this market, owners are apparently happy with the numbers they are getting so things will not likely change. It is this strange set of circumstances behind the anomaly that no one in this large market does not carry the Delilah Radio Show or the John Tesh show. Alas, I have had to rely on satellite radio to fulfill my listening choices although I still listen to local radio sometimes too. You know it is a strange market when a station like Star94 flipped to all Christmas a couple weeks before the big day a few years back.
B98.5 used to go all Christmas. Although their ratings were sky high, they found that some of their audience that had left them during the Christmas music didn't return in January. So they made a decision to mix Christmas music in with their regular format. Their holiday ratings increased though not as much as they had with all-Christmas music, but they were in a better position after Christmas.
They were able to get away with this because after 94.9 left the AC format, B98.5 had no direct Christmas music competition. They would not have been able to do this if they still had a full-time AC competitor that played all Christmas music. (Apparently, they didn't consider 104.7 The Fish, which goes 100% Christmas music, a direct competitor because of The Fish's religious slant to its Christmas music.)
FM wise Atlanta / Fulton County was originally “allocated” few commercial stations based on it’s population in the 1950 and 1960 census. 92.9, 94.9, 96.1 98.5, 99.7, 103.3. Somehow Cobb got 2 “C”s 94.1 and 101.5 (which ended up on Atlanta towers by the 1970’s) and Dekalb got none. Almost everything else came in after 80/90 including the 2 full C’s from Gainesville which don’t really work well south of the airport. There are not that many “market covering” signals:
Radio Stations in 30303.
Not being a super completive market, stations had a little more leeway with their formats. I really haven’t kept up with “hometown” talent but I am pretty sure most folks on the air in Atlanta worked in a smaller markets before Atlanta. Then there is Mark Arum (definitely not an Atlanta native) who has only worked at WSB.
And Atlanta got a middling number of VHF TV stations (4), a lot less than the theoretical max of 7 (2, 4, 5 or 6, 7, 9, 11, 13) that the biggest cities got. We were lucky to get the Big Three network affiliates but DuMont had to share time on Channel 5; when we got the 4th channel it was allocated to educational use.
Yeah we could've gotten more VHF channels here. Of course, Channels 4, 7 and 13 would overlap too much with Greenville on the Northeast side (13 out of Macon would also affect southside Atlanta), 6 with Augusta and Birmingham, 9 with Columbus and Chattanooga (possibly WVAN/Savannah as well). 11 could work but with a slight null to avoid interference from WTOC/Savannah.
BTW: I know we ended up talking TV on the Atlanta-Radio board. But I just love this kind of stuff! 😁
Channel 9 was originally allocated to Rome. It moved to Chattanooga when the owner wanted to move the sister Columbus now-Channel 9 to channel 9 from a UHF frequency and needed to maintain separation.
Is the closest channel 10 to Atlanta in Albany?
No Birminghams WBIQ is about 30 miles closer. Macon could have been an all U market and maybe Albany
I don't think any other market in the Top 100 is missing a secular All-Christmas station. Some markets have two (Seattle, Cleveland, Tampa, Charlotte, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Portland OR) and a few even have three (Milwaukee, Albany).
And yet, when WSTR tried it a few years ago, it really didn't help much in the ratings.
And yet, when WSTR tried it a few years ago, it really didn't help much in the ratings.
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Their ratings actually did noticeably increase though not as much as is usually the case with all-Christmas stations. But keep in mind they made the switch late, and no one was expecting it from what was then a Hot AC.
There’s no Delilah here because none of the AC stations here belong to iHeart. There are about 10% of AC stations across the country that don’t belong to iHeart and do play her. But that is the main reason. That 10% are typically owned by very small radio companies. Same reason 90% of the stations that carry AT40 belong to iHeart. If anything were to happen to Power 96.1 - I highly doubt Q99.7 will pickup AT40. Plus the CMG stations aren’t very big on playing nationally syndicated programming. I am surprised they still play Retro Pop Reunion on B98.5 after 10 years.
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