• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Christmas Songs too Early

J

joshzz

I don't want to jump the gun here but please give me your opinion as to when is best to add Christmas songs? We have a new Christmas jingle package and look forward to playing Christmas Music though we won't be going all Christmas. I'm surprised that I have heard Christmas songs being played on fellow Christian Music Stations already such as Spirit 105.3 (Seattle)

Appreciate your input. Josh LIFT FM RADIO NETWORK http://www.liftfm.com
 
There will always be some in your audience who would be OK with you starting 24/7 Christmas music in August; however, I've always believed (and listeners have supported the idea that) Christmas music starts either noon Thanksgiving day (after Santa passes in the Macy's thanksgiving Day Parade, basically) or on "Black Friday," the day after Christmas.

On the other hand, the stations that go all-Christmas benefit from being the first to switch in the market. In the Tulsa market, there was one year where one of the local stations went all-Christmas ON Halloween to make sure they got the jump on everybody else. If you don't have another all-Christmas station in your market, you can wait until the "last moment" (whatever your listeners think that is) to go all-Christmas.

It's also worth mentioning that those stations that go all-Christmas tend to have poor ratings at the beginning of their programming, then dominate the market by the time we get to Christmas Day.

Since you said you WEREN'T going all Christmas, I'd stick to the "day after Thanksgiving" rule.

Have you thought about asking your listeners? It couldn't hurt...
 
FUNNY you ask that. We have asked our listeners for two to three years in a row and we get some that want all Christmas right away, some that want a mix and some that want us to wait until mid December but a majority seem to want a mix beginning after Thanksgiving. Though not a small number prefer that we wait until December 1. The percentages do change year to year. :)
 
Your market will tell you a lot about what you should do. Are any other stations going all-Christmas? If not, it might make more sense (believe it or not) to start it right after Thanksgiving.

If another station in town is pounding "Holly Jolly Christmas" (even if you won't be), it would be kinder to your listeners to hold off until that December 1st mark.

Of course, YMMV. It's a balancing act each year, for sure!
 
josh said:
We already have a full time Christmas Station in our market. I can't deny that they are doing a great job and even changed their web address for the season. >>

http://christmas.easy931.com/
Click to expand...

Surprising we have Easy 93.1 in the South Florida Market who went all Christmas 2 years ago when it eventually flipped from Rock to Easy Listening. Last year, its sister station went all Christmas (97.3 the coast) while Easy 93.1 intermixed Christmas into its regular playlist.
 
Based on a station already in your market, my recommendation would be to wait as long as you can to start playing Christmas music, and play as few as you think you can get away with.

Christmas Eve and Christmas morning you can pound the music (after 6pm until noon Christmas day would be my recommendation) but with the other station burning the carols to a crisp, I'd get out of it as quickly as possible.

If you and the other station share any notable amount of audience, you might think about getting some sweepers made to run through the holiday season saying something to the effect of "we play songs that celebrate the birth of Jesus every day of the year!" to help deflect any questions about why a Christian station not playing non-stop Christmas music.

(Besides that... it's true!)

Good luck; its never easy to decide exactly what balance is right, and I tweak my strategy every year.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom