This same, tired old thread gets repeated more often than Rudolph the Res Nosed Reindeer.
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Christmas Music
- Thread starter charles1234
- Start date
So true. I don't get it either. Matters as much as Groundhog Day, except randomly predicting an early Spring is more popular.
Because it's a tradition. Most normal consumers are over the same rotation of XMAS tunes by day after. But, if you spend a couple bucks and sign up for SiriusXM streaming, they keep a couple of their XMAS channels going well into January. Woo Hoo!
Gawd, I feel like William Shatner in that famous SNL skit telling Trekkies to get a life:
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I was thinking about this topic further. With everything going on in the world, and subsequently how it impacts media, including radio and TV, is predicting when Y-station starts playing Christmas music merely some sort of distraction away from stressful world events? Or is the interest and focus of some tiny sector of society so narrow, that anxiously awaiting the start of holiday music on their local radio station is above things like discussing; how radio is coping with the changing ad landscape? Or with increasing conflict in the world, how is radio covering the conflict versus in the past? Are all the wars and geopolitical changes allowing an opening for radio, as has been happening to print forms of media, to regain its place as a form of media reporting from war zones?
I mean, there's so much that could be discussed here that impacts and addresses the media industry, but somehow predicting when a particular station starts to play holiday music trumps everything else? Really?
Okay, rant over...
I mean, there's so much that could be discussed here that impacts and addresses the media industry, but somehow predicting when a particular station starts to play holiday music trumps everything else? Really?
Okay, rant over...
I told you in post #18. It's a cult.
There’s seemingly always something heavy going on. The specifics change—world conflicts, economic calamity, pandemic, whatever—and this keeps coming up.
If you want Christmas music, here in the year 2023 AD, you can enjoy it anytime. It doesn’t magically appear only when transmitted over radio waves. And it doesn’t disappear when Bing Crosby and Gene Autry are packed up for the season by local radio. It doesn’t matter one bit if that happens at midnight on Christmas night, 6 am the next morning or Groundhog Day.
If you want Christmas music, here in the year 2023 AD, you can enjoy it anytime. It doesn’t magically appear only when transmitted over radio waves. And it doesn’t disappear when Bing Crosby and Gene Autry are packed up for the season by local radio. It doesn’t matter one bit if that happens at midnight on Christmas night, 6 am the next morning or Groundhog Day.
Lots of Kool Aid being consumed.
It's almost like particular fans of radio in general, intentionally choose to ignore modern times. I get it, their motivation for coming to this site is validation and reliving of their youth when radio ruled aural media.
I wish some of the Christmas music predictors, or those excited about holiday music hitting the traditional music airwaves would come on here and explain or defend their excitement, but without doing so, I attribute the interest purely as it relates to nostalgia. Maybe as it related to their youth growing up they remember that when radio stations started playing Christmas music, it became a fond memory that's lasted through today.
I know that most participants here have heard of streaming, and some may even listen via stream, while it seems others refuse to acknowledge that streaming, an audio-on-demand service, competes with radio which happens only in real-time. They know Christmas music is available year-round 24/7 via some stream, but they refuse to give in to something that displaces their memories. This is no doubt why topics commonly shift from a modern discussion about radio, to things that happened on their local radio station 40 years ago.
You have to admit; that the whole thing is an interesting study of psychological behavioral patterns.
All of that is true. It is interesting in many ways. And I get nostalgia, it can be fun to recall the past. But I don't care to live there or pretend that things should be that way all these many, many years later. I remember the whole "mix in a Christmas song and build up to the continuous marathon" thing. I liked it. I have personalized playlists that can do the same basic thing. That's not what works best for many stations. Great. And I like holiday music well past the holiday, so I can listen to it. Just because it's off the radio...so what?
Heck, even back in the stone age of my youth, my not exactly tech-savvy parents knew they could make Christmas music come as early or stay as long as they wanted with those things called records. Not as easy as asking Alexa to play whatever individual song I want, but when we hosted New Year's dinners and the holiday music on the radio was long gone, out came the various albums on the record changer, and voila, Christmas in all it's boxed-album-set "glory."
Time to channel the 3-year-old twins that live next door to me (sample question to me one day: "why do you have two bikes?"):
Why do people avidly follow sportball, so much so that it rakes in billions of dollars? Why do they bet on it, too?
Why do people go to casinos? Why do they play their state's lottery, memorably described as "a tax on the statistically ignorant"?
Why does CVS start stocking Halloween candy in August?
Why are there trivia nights?
Why do message boards exist?
I would posit that the best answer to such questions is that people look for diversion, look for entertainment, and just want to get a little enjoyment in their lives.
As for your question about media - radio news was decimated 35-40 years ago because it was thought to be a "tune-out" and not thought to be compatible with music formats. Some PDs were just prejudiced against it, and GMs were looking to cut costs. It was also hard for radio news departments to compete with TV news, especially as video technology got better and more portable, and so some just gave up. There were exceptions, but that was the general situation. What remained was NPR, which steadily improved over time; network news, which varied in quality; and syndicated talk, which made no pretense at fairness or accuracy. This what radio stations have trained people to expect from radio: not much unless you go to NPR; otherwise, it's a cheerleading section for the Republican party. It would take at least a decade for commercial operations to try to shift those perceptions and even then I'm not sure they would succeed...not taking into account whether they would have fewer limits on resources than they do now. NPR and similar operations have figured out the next best thing to a subscription model, while commercial radio is dealing with a revenue base that seems to be static at best. (Even so, NPR and some local member stations have had their own struggles recently, manifesting as layoffs.) With that said, NPR doesn't focus on spot news, has a magazine-style format that doesn't appeal to ever-shorter attention spans, and many local member stations often just ride the network and don't give much coverage to their own community. So for national and international news, it's OK, but try to find out what's going on in your own community. You won't get that from any but a very few radio stations.
From my own parochial perspective, commercial radio news and talk in Denver is simply awful, and won't change unless there's a crazy billionaire out there who's willing to become a crazy millionaire while taking on the behemoth that is IHM. On the non-commercial side of things, Colorado Public Radio has a statewide focus but is subject to the same positive and negative attributes described in the previous paragraph for public radio generally.
Right. Now this isn't as big a deal as it used to be before 2020, but I can actually hear good music in the car, even at night. I don't have to wait until I am on the computer.
I don't usually drive at night since March 2020 because it became possible to do certain things from home. But my choices in the car after dark were NPR talk and Christmas music, if there was any.
By the way, Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby can be heard year round if you know the right stations online. It's amazing how many recordings both men did.
Re: news…I grew up listening in my youngest years to MOR with plenty of news—hourly, half hourly…and a god-forsaken amount of chatter and spots. Once I started discovering other radio, at most news was confined to morning shows, and not insufferably long. And there was no going back. Never in a million years would I want news on my music station.
That’s not prejudiced PDs, that’s people moving on. There’s news all around when I want it. When I want music, I want music, not a top of the hour headline summary. It’s hard to imagine something being more of a tune-out motivator if it runs beyond a short few headlines woven into the flow of a morning show.
That’s not prejudiced PDs, that’s people moving on. There’s news all around when I want it. When I want music, I want music, not a top of the hour headline summary. It’s hard to imagine something being more of a tune-out motivator if it runs beyond a short few headlines woven into the flow of a morning show.
So, are you saying that participants who get excited about predicting when their local radio station will play Christmas tunes have the inane curiosity of a three-year-old? Crap, even I didn't make that claim.
Probably because sports has a huge, mass-appeal audience and sports betting has cashed in on the mass appeal. Somehow I don't think holiday music predictions fall under that same scope.
On the off chance, they will hit a jackpot or the lottery. Still don't see how the comparison correlates to a handful of radio enthusiasts anxious about when Christmas music will begin on which radio stations. Those wouldn't be considered anywhere near the numbers near sports betting. Chances are there are more 'Furrie' than Christmas radio predictors, although I would put them in a similar category.
Likely because seasonal retail items go on sale everywhere earlier each year. When retailers find that items aren't selling products increasingly earlier in the year, expect the timing to change.
Because trivia contests are a good excuse for people to visit bars and drink.
I'm beginning to wonder that myself.
But predicting when a radio station will play holiday music? Is that really a thing, or an anomaly?
Given all the instability in the world, I argue there might be an opportunity for the revitalization of radio news networks. You're right, it would take Jeff Bezos, Steve Balmer, or some other rich mogul to fund the experiment. But if you take a look at newspapers like the NY Times, and Bezos-funded Washington Post, gone are the expensive printing presses, replaced by news and opinion podcasts and the move to electronic print formatted for smartphones. Neither of which mirrors the scope or profitability of back in the day when newspapers were dominant, but no longer in a hole trying to dig out. Sure, music stations probably would rightfully pass on featuring regular newscasts, but just like the revitalization of print media into a new form, could create national/international news radio as an alternative to just right-wing talk. And just as with newspapers, along with the headlines and truncated stories, more in-depth podcasts and online features.
That's because just like local TV is finding, ad-supported anything is becoming more fractionalized. The expectation is that radio or TV will bend to the digital model; numbers of impressions. It's tough for broadcast to conform to an impressions model because almost everything is done in (for the most part) real-time. When you jack up the impressions, content listeners want to hear or viewers want to watch, gets diluted. Oh, and advertisers/agencies want to pay the same or less for each impression as they do with digital.
I agree with you, but having owned small market stations, it's tough to find news people who can write, let alone not sound like some kid giving the morning middle school announcements. Listeners expect the same quality of writing, editing, and presentation as network news provides. Anything less is a tune-out.
From my experience, Billionaires and Millionaires don't have radio on their radar. It wasn't until a group from inside the Washington Post approached Jeff Bezos with a proposal to bail out the paper, including a complete overhaul to meet today's news consumers where they live; online with investigative journalism. Most NPR-affiliated stations are top ten performers in larger markets. Here in Washington D.C., WAMU-FM is consistently top three. So, there appears to be room for national/international news via the radio and podcasts.
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If you look around at other market discussions, you'll find similar discussions about predicting when holiday music will start on whichever radio station. This phenomenon isn't unique to one single market being discussed.
It does get repetitive. They just need to play the same songs less though that can be hard since there are many versions of the same song anyways.
Nah, just my sense of humor as it applies to bemusement when it comes to certain forms of trivia. I've tossed off silly remarks here that, inevitably, someone runs with and takes to their (il)logical conclusion, which can then get really absurd. But I yam what I yam.
Social media have facilitated discussion groups focused on some extremely narrow topics. They can go deep.
Or some foundation.
That said, there's a lot of instability in the world compared to, say, the 1990s, but the 1970s and early 1980s were no picnic, either. We may look back on the 1990s as an anomalous period where the United States could enforce its will just about anywhere except the Middle East, which is a perpetual hot spot. What may be new this time is that Israel is about to turn Gaza into a giant parking lot and who knows where that will lead. The "end of history" turned out not to be so. Too many people in the world who can't let go of historic grievances, including in the United States.
I subscribe to both. I notice that the WaPo tends to emphasize opinion, though the news coverage is good, too. The NYT is starting to fall for overly long articles on esoteric topics whose real audience is journalism prize panels, the very phenomenon that I think hastened the end of the quality regional press. But the breaking coverage has become very good.
Aside from NPR and national broadcasters in other countries, that hasn't really happened to this point. Not saying it couldn't, but the economic model has to be sustainable.
I think there's an even more basic problem: measuring those impressions. The only cookies I use for TV viewing come from Safeway.
A lot of talented people had to bail out of the profession in the 1980s as jobs became scarce. No one thought about ensuring a pipeline of talent for those stations that still wanted to provide news coverage. Radio has largely not been a business that's done long-term planning. I've heard the decline in quality even on San Francisco's KCBS. It's still head and shoulders above many other stations, and lately it's been able to tap into the KGO diaspora, but the quality of presentation has slipped compared to 20 years ago.
Don't get me started about bad news writing. I hear it all the time, even on top stations, both radio and TV. Modern news writing is mostly formulaic and lifeless. If I had written some of those scripts when I was a journalism student, I would have gotten chewed out.
No, it's not on their radar, but it only takes one nut to try it. If I were in that position, I probably wouldn't.
KQED-FM in San Francisco usually is toward the very top in its market as well - as is KCBS on the commercial side. But I think this is very market-dependent. CPR News is more toward the middle of the pack in the Denver market. I'm still trying to figure things out here, but my initial theory is that this is such a sports-crazy market that the sports stations attract listeners that might go to other spoken-word stations under different circumstances.
If you go 24x7 for a month or two, and you need to play what the audience wants to hear, oh and the songs are flipping short…of course it’s repetitive. But…no listener is obsessively tracking the songs and the frequency. They’re at work, in and out of the car, etc. They’re hearing a general “mood,” not dwelling on how long ago and which version of Jingle Bell Rock played. That’s a weird message board obsession, unless you’re actually being paid to program the music somewhere.
Maybe some country stations might want to try an all-country Christmas format where they play only Christmas songs from country artists past and present ("Your favorite holiday songs performed by your favorite country artists past and present. This is 'Christmas Country'!").
I'm surprised that as far as I know, no country station has tried this. Maybe KKGO-105.1 in the Los Angeles area should try an all-country Christmas format if they go all-Christmas this year.
With more than 2,300 country stations in the US, someone is likely doing that. I wouldn't be surprised if more than a few small-market classic country stations are going all-Christmas. They would certainly have enough material to work with, as dozens of Christmas albums by all sorts of country performers came out in the '80s, '90s and '00s. George Strait, Vince Gill, Trisha Yearwood, Alan Jackson, Garth Brooks ... probably more big names recorded holiday albums than didn't.
That said, I don't think any contemporary country station would want to try going all-Christmas today. The format is too hot and too uptempo now, and the core audience might be driven off. Maybe if megastars on the level of Morgan Wallen and Luke Combs were to release Christmas albums next month, but I'm pretty sure that's not happening.
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