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Flip to Christmas Music

I can't imagine these stations would all play Christmas through New Year's Day. Heck, I was genuinely surprised to see the companywide initiative to keep it going until yesterday for quite a few of their all-holiday outlets. It's been said over the years (decades) that the research says that listeners are ready to hear Christmas music the first week of November, but don't dare play it on December 26th.

I also have noticed this is the second (or third) year in a row many of the iHeart stations that went all-Christmas (and this year did not stay all-Christmas until the 28th) were sprinkling in 1-2 holiday songs an hour this weekend. In fact, it looks like Mix 989 in Youngstown is still doing it today.
 
I would also be curious if many PDs/market managers are even taking a careful look at the Nielsen data from the week of Christmas and New Year's. I doubt it reflects any sort of regular listening patterns.
 
ted chittenden said:
And that brings us to 2028 which is a leap year, meaning Christmas Day will fall on Monday. In that year, if IHeart followed the same schedule as it did this year, then Christmas music will be playing on its Christmas stations until midnight on New Year's Day which is, exactly 7 days following Christmas Day that year. It will be interesting for those of us who are still alive on January 1 of 2029 to see if that is what IHeart (assuming it's still around) does.
Click to expand...
By 2029 radio will be defunct. Iheart will still be in the game though by having roving bands of Christmas carolers going door to door interspersed with carolers passing the hat for and threatening not to sing till homeowners/renters cough up some ad revenue or just saying "This carol brought to you by the fine folks at Sohio. We'll go till Sohio says no 'mo." You have the option of slamming the door in their face which would be the new version of "changing the channel".
 
Yabadabado1 said:
By 2029 radio will be defunct. Iheart will still be in the game though by having roving bands of Christmas carolers going door to door interspersed with carolers passing the hat for and threatening not to sing till homeowners/renters cough up some ad revenue or just saying "This carol brought to you by the fine folks at Sohio. We'll go till Sohio says no 'mo." You have the option of slamming the door in their face which would be the new version of "changing the channel".
Click to expand...
And the Iheart head caroler will make an announcement about how all the carolers singing voices are “guaranteed human” with no autotune!
 
vw86 said:
I can't imagine these stations would all play Christmas through New Year's Day. Heck, I was genuinely surprised to see the companywide initiative to keep it going until yesterday for quite a few of their all-holiday outlets. It's been said over the years (decades) that the research says that listeners are ready to hear Christmas music the first week of November, but don't dare play it on December 26th.

I also have noticed this is the second (or third) year in a row many of the iHeart stations that went all-Christmas (and this year did not stay all-Christmas until the 28th) were sprinkling in 1-2 holiday songs an hour this weekend. In fact, it looks like Mix 989 in Youngstown is still doing it today.
Click to expand...
Never once in my 30+ year career heard of research saying playing Christmas music on Dec 26th a "no no" or that "listeners don't want to hear it".

Its not shocking that Christmas music was played through Dec 28th. Or maybe it is to non programmers. Christmas was on a Thursday, just rolled it through the weekend.

If Christmas on a Monday, then yes, done on the 26th.

So much over analyzing.

The same will happen next year. Christmas on a Friday, music will roll through Sunday night. As Baretta would say "you can take that to the bank".
 
ProgrammingVet said:
Never once in my 30+ year career heard of research saying playing Christmas music on Dec 26th a "no no" or that "listeners don't want to hear it".

Its not shocking that Christmas music was played through Dec 28th. Or maybe it is to non programmers. Christmas was on a Thursday, just rolled it through the weekend.

If Christmas on a Monday, then yes, done on the 26th.

So much over analyzing.

The same will happen next year. Christmas on a Friday, music will roll through Sunday night. As Baretta would say "you can take that to the bank".
Click to expand...

Some families (especially those that neccessitate separate days to celebrate, due to in-law or exes-family committments) celebrated a Christmas gathering over this past weekend, so having a Christmas soundtrack on at least one radio station through the weekend, if the 25th falls on a Thursday or Friday, seems to be acceptable.

I can't remember in the days when I worked at a station with live, local personalities for at least 75% of the day if we either slowly phased out the Christmas tunes the evening of the 25th or went back to normal format after 6pm. Or if we just did Holiday music until we went to satellite programming after midnight.
 
CTListener said:
Don't forget that these "December" ratings only include a small sliver of December. The rest of the month will be in the "Holiday" book.
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Correct. It's a weird calendar this year for a lot of stations that didn't flip super early. Majic was in holiday mode for the entire December book but WDOK wasn't for the first week. And half of the Holiday Book will be dates after Christmas Day. 102 won't have a book where they were in holiday mode all four weeks this year.
 
radiofan2023 said:
And the Iheart head caroler will make an announcement about how all the carolers singing voices are “guaranteed human” with no autotune!
Click to expand...

I've been hearing that as the new hourly ident on the Mix Rewind stream. "An iHeartRadio Station! Certified human!" Is it, though? I mean, yes, the DJs are technically human, but they're overlaid on a very automated stream. Did that propagate to the terrestrial stations, too?

Thankfully, the $1000 giveaway starts again on Monday (I think), so that's going to become the new top-hour ident.
 


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