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Starting Christmas Music Too Early...

T

tothedj

I've noticed a trend in the last few years of stores putting there Christmas items
out while it's still warm outside, and many radio stations are beginning to play
"Sounds Of The Season" way too early!
I remember a time when stations played maybe 1 or 2 songs a hour from about
December 1st thru the 15th, and then maybe played 3 tunes a hour up till
Christmas Eve when they gradually went into Christmas Music until 6:00 P.M.
or 12 Midnight Christmas Day.
I enjoy Christmas songs but we need to remember "The Reason For The Season!"
 
We forgot the original reason.
The new reason is to be amused and placated for a couple months.
And to make some buzz and some promotional opportunities.
And to sell some stuff.
 
It may be a ratings maker, but with 3 triangle stations playing all Christmas music until Christmas Day, the slices of pie will be smaller and smaller.

I don't see the need for 3 triangle stations playing this music for a month and a half.

The only station I can see playing it is Mix 101.5. They have slowly been skewing towards Sunny 93.9's audience since they went to Kiss last year. You'll hear more Celine Dion, Elton John, Billy Joel, Clay Aiken, Air Supply, you know, all the popular music in 2007. :D so naturally they'd play the music to get their core audience of women 25-54 to listen while shopping at Cary and Triangle Town Center on Saturday's. ::)

Y102.9/102.3 just doesn't have the signal strength and you think Kiss would stay with their format all the way through, but it just shows what the heck we know. ???
 
Before, "the old way," hearing Christmas music was like going back to "the good old days" and a good memory kind of thing.
Lasted all Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, when families were together, eating, celebrating, whatever, doing "special times."

Now, it's like Christmas music is forced on us, about the face and neck, with no thought or effort at all, just a preprogrammed list of "Christmas favorites" (how many are there, 60 or 80?) that they drag out over and over and over for 45 days (scheduled with a ratings book in mind, not a season for memories or getting together with friends and family or anything good) and beat us over the head with. When we shop, when we eat, when we drive around, when we are doing every mundane thing we usually do in a given 45 day time period. It's become more blah blah blah let's get it over with than it used to be to hear Christmas music for the short time it was on the airwaves.

It just doesn't seem like it has the same "good old memories" attached to it anymore, it's more like an obligation the radio stations are hammering into us with no imagination at all, and what stands out more is that we're being beaten over the head with it. What we'll remember is driving around with the family and trying to find something else besides Christmas music and trying to save the special Christmas music for the real special times when we're opening presents or putting up the tree. We'll have to try and restrict it to "special times" because we have heard the samesamesame 60 songs over and over for years, not to mention all the times we can stand it already this "season."

An amateur radio drama, for Christmastime memories, set 40 years from now:
"Hey, Dad, remember the years back in The Aughts when the radio stations tried to make us think the Christmas season lasted 60 days?"
"Yeah son, those were trying times, weren't they? It was like it dragged on forever. We couldn't avoid it. Everywhere we went when you were kids, it was all Christmas flash and no Christmas substance. Then it turned out that they were scheduling it to sell ads more than to make any meaningful statements about family or the season or anything people valued. At least we know what Christmas is really about. The presents!"
"Dang Dad what are you, a radio exec? That was pretty shallow."
"Yeah, I know. I'm old now and like the feeling of turning off my brain completely, and making like I'm a radio exec helps me turn off almost all my brain cells to where I only see dollar signs and ratings to the hundredths points. I don't even remember there is or will be or was any time beyond the immediate week or two when I do that."
"Ratings points, Dad? That proves you're crazy talking. They did away with Arbitron years ago, right before Internet radio started getting big. Good thing this is just amateur radio, else they'd take you away." ;)
 
^^^Quadraphonic with the post of the year, 100% agreed.

When you play Christmas music for 60 days before Christmas, naturally folks will more than likely tire of it.

I see nothing wrong with playing Christmas music on the weekends or even weeknights from 7-11.
But playing it all day/all night and 3 stations to boot makes absolutely no sense. ::)
 
quadraphonic said:
Now, it's like Christmas music is forced on us, about the face and neck, with no thought or effort at all, just a preprogrammed list of "Christmas favorites" (how many are there, 60 or 80?) that they drag out over and over and over for 45 days (scheduled with a ratings book in mind, not a season for memories or getting together with friends and family or anything good) and beat us over the head with. When we shop, when we eat, when we drive around, when we are doing every mundane thing we usually do in a given 45 day time period. It's become more blah blah blah let's get it over with than it used to be to hear Christmas music for the short time it was on the airwaves.

It just doesn't seem like it has the same "good old memories" attached to it anymore, it's more like an obligation the radio stations are hammering into us with no imagination at all, and what stands out more is that we're being beaten over the head with it. What we'll remember is driving around with the family and trying to find something else besides Christmas music and trying to save the special Christmas music for the real special times when we're opening presents or putting up the tree. We'll have to try and restrict it to "special times" because we have heard the samesamesame 60 songs over and over for years, not to mention all the times we can stand it already this "season."
Click to expand...

Are any of you All Christmas Music haters actually in broadcasting? You sound like a bunch of bitter old men and women sitting in your rocking chairs talking about how much better it was back in the good old days as your grand kids roll their eyes and shake their heads.

For most of the stations in the country that go All Christmas Music, the next few weeks until the end of the year will mean the largest audiences, longest TSL and most money made that they will see all year long. And you think they are stupid for doing it? If the vast majority of their audience didn't want to hear all christmas music all the time, they wouldn't see these type of increases. When the listeners decide that they don't like it anymore then the audience levels will decrease and the stations won't do it anymore.

Guess what. If you personally don't like hearing christmas music all the time, then all you have to do is CHANGE THE STATION!! There are dozens of other radio stations that are not playing all christmas music. Listen to one of them.
 
My grand-kids (if I had them) wouldn't be rolling their eyes. They'd be furiously punching around their Sirius or XM or iPod looking for something decent to listen to.

These stations that are supposedly "raking it in" by going all Xmas on November 1st? What will they do on January 2nd?

3 market FMs going all Christmas in early November is simply indefensible, from a programming/listening standpoint. Aside from the previous posts about the "specialness" of Holiday music being obliterated by its constant barrage for weeks in a row (just like the merchandising of Christmas is in full swing by October now), the programming philosophy simply doesn't hold up. This is mostly untested music--polarizing music, some of it, from artists often way outside of a station's core. There are very few titles (to make a 24/7 format work, you really have to dig up some really questionable stuff), and audience burnout is going to be a big problem. (Of course, maybe it won't hit them until the last week of the book...)

Why do stations do it? Some sales manager thinks it's a winner. Some GM thinks it'll make a "splash" (yeah, like when a car drives by you on a rainy day). NOBODY thinks they'll be the 2nd or (God forbid 3rd) station in the market to have this "brainstorm". The PDs hate it...unless there's a format change coming in January anyway.

I've programmed for over 25 years, and in my day...(he said as he helped his non-existent grandkids find their iPods), we sprinkled the music in starting around Thanksgiving, heavier on the weekends, and didn't really pull the stops out until AFTER the fall book was over...

But maybe I have my head up my ass. Maybe all the civillians I hear complaining about 3 Xmas stations on FM right now are wrong, too. Don't get me wrong--I love Christmas music...starting about December 15th...
 
Of course it's about the money. Just like it is for Wal-Mart.
Radio is a business, it's not a couple of guys just having fun in their garage.

The problem is most radio operators aren't LISTENER oriented.
All three Raleigh stations that went all Christmas have disillusioned a LARGE
portion of their listeners. It would be like Olive Garden changing their menu to
Mexican food for two months to see if they could get more customers.

Yes, these stations listeners want to hear some Christmas on these stations, a few cuts an hour
starting around Thanksgiving. Then, maybe all Christmas music the last week before Christmas.

Going all Christmas now...is just a chess match, and not filling the desires of MOST listeners.
 
xpd said:
quadraphonic said:
Now, it's like Christmas music is forced on us, about the face and neck, with no thought or effort at all, just a preprogrammed list of "Christmas favorites" (how many are there, 60 or 80?) that they drag out over and over and over for 45 days (scheduled with a ratings book in mind, not a season for memories or getting together with friends and family or anything good) and beat us over the head with. When we shop, when we eat, when we drive around, when we are doing every mundane thing we usually do in a given 45 day time period. It's become more blah blah blah let's get it over with than it used to be to hear Christmas music for the short time it was on the airwaves.

It just doesn't seem like it has the same "good old memories" attached to it anymore, it's more like an obligation the radio stations are hammering into us with no imagination at all, and what stands out more is that we're being beaten over the head with it. What we'll remember is driving around with the family and trying to find something else besides Christmas music and trying to save the special Christmas music for the real special times when we're opening presents or putting up the tree. We'll have to try and restrict it to "special times" because we have heard the samesamesame 60 songs over and over for years, not to mention all the times we can stand it already this "season."
Click to expand...

Are any of you All Christmas Music haters actually in broadcasting? You sound like a bunch of bitter old men and women sitting in your rocking chairs talking about how much better it was back in the good old days as your grand kids roll their eyes and shake their heads.

For most of the stations in the country that go All Christmas Music, the next few weeks until the end of the year will mean the largest audiences, longest TSL and most money made that they will see all year long. And you think they are stupid for doing it? If the vast majority of their audience didn't want to hear all christmas music all the time, they wouldn't see these type of increases. When the listeners decide that they don't like it anymore then the audience levels will decrease and the stations won't do it anymore.

Guess what. If you personally don't like hearing christmas music all the time, then all you have to do is CHANGE THE STATION!! There are dozens of other radio stations that are not playing all christmas music. Listen to one of them.
Click to expand...

Are you "in broadcasting" now? Kudos for hanging in there.

No, I'll admit I'm not "in broadcasting." Neither are 99.9992% [guesstimation, don't rip me for inaccuracy, don't have "industry insider information" in front of me] of Americans. But they all have opinions about what they like to listen to, that apparently peops "in broadcasting" [like you must be, if it's that important to you to separate those who are in it and those who aren't] don't value. AT ALL. Sorry for exercising ya. At least I got you to ponder for a moment how earth-shattering short term gains in TSL and AQH and bumps in ratings based on riding the Christmas train into the ground can make you feel warm AND fuzzy. Thank me for that. :-* It's also likely that when people are checking who they listen to, they remember the one that got press for playing Christmas music or that's otherwise in the top of their minds more that leads to "the big AQH/revenue jumps" at Christmas time. PPM might end up showing something different. Horrors for those who live by statistics only when they are in their favor: "statistics could be wrooonnngg to begin with!

"The vast majority of their audience" can't want Christmas music for that long. It's "the vast majority of the audience, because it's a gimmick, a fad, that makes people listening to other stations stop their scan when they get to it, too. Much the same way it will make the KissFM audience recoil when they hear Hall & Oates singing "Jingle Bell Rock" for the 20th time instead of Keith Sweat. Much the same way it will confuse the Mix101.5 people and the Y102.9 people from the stations "regular mission" that they've been expecting THE REST OF THE YEAR.

Additionally...
So you had to go with the "CHANGE THE STATION" line? :mad: ;D
You must be a radio exec, chasing someone to another station like that. Did you read this while you were working on your station's liner cards, then channel the creativity over this way instead of those four index cards? ;D
Please don't tell me you're saving "THERE'S AN OFF SWITCH TOO!" for later? :eek:

Overall, dude it's all in fun, be realistic. "It's just the internets."
Short term bumps in revenue FROM DOING SOMETHING YOU DON'T DO THE REST OF THE YEAR just seems to me not something a business [Olive Garden or a radio station, for instance] should be proud of. They shouldn't want to preserve the idea as sacred, and it shouldn't make them run smack on all us deviants "outside the industry" [i.e. "listening public," those "within the sound of my voice" as it is probably phrased on your liner cards there] for expressing an opinion about it.....

And when all else fails, defer to chromiumboy. ;D
 
P.S. To borrow surfdude's Olive Garden analogy, it's like Olive Garden offering a "Valentine's Day Special" from December 1-February 28.

Sure they get some customers in who had no idea about the special and stumble across the special on a POP sign or a menu, and get it because it's there.
They get some who found out about the special and like the deal offered because it's a good deal, not because it's for Valentine's Day specifically.
And they get some people who are turned off to Olive Garden because they see their ad people are telling them one thing about the special, when it's actually something else behind it. And them people don't like the feeling that Olive Garden is trying to trick them and expecting them to not notice.

Only the delusional think it's a real "Valentine's Day special" on January 20th. And only a delusional Olive Garden exec would continue to call it a "Valentine's Day special" for that long, when it's just a special gimmick that needs another name.

Maybe the "All-Christmas Music" time should be called "Short-Term Statistical Enhancement Trickery" time or something... ;D
 
Quote from XPD: "For most of the stations in the country that go All Christmas Music, the next few weeks until the end of the year will mean the largest audiences, longest TSL and most money made that they will see all year long. And you think they are stupid for doing it? If the vast majority of their audience didn't want to hear all christmas music all the time, they wouldn't see these type of increases. When the listeners decide that they don't like it anymore then the audience levels will decrease and the stations won't do it anymore.

Guess what. If you personally don't like hearing christmas music all the time, then all you have to do is CHANGE THE STATION!! There are dozens of other radio stations that are not playing all christmas music. Listen to one of them."




The problem is that it's completely short-sighted. It's now done for the longest possible time so that the station can make more money. It's only logical that people are going to get sick of it at some point. If you're allowed to eat a banana split every day, then sooner or later you'll be sick of it and never want a banana split again. It's just logic. Too much of something that was meant to be in small doses. It's called greed. But, hey, it's not my station, not my problem. Like you said, I'll just listen to something else. But, to me, it's just another reason that the public is getting away from terrestrial radio.
 
Are you telling me than an advertising buy in a market like those in NC could possibly be place because of something a station is doing today - rather than what it did in the last book?

And what media buyer would ever make a buy based on fall book ratings! Say it ain't so! Once the Christmas music is gone, so are the listeners - back to their old habits, you figure?!
 
Yall right, it's "the season" that drives the increase in revenue, not some short-term stinkin' genius advertising/promotional ploy.

KissFM/Mix101.5/WMAG/Y102.9 could run a lot of things during this time of year and see a bump in short-term revenue.
 
xpd said:
Are any of you All Christmas Music haters actually in broadcasting? You sound like a bunch of bitter old men and women sitting in your rocking chairs talking about how much better it was back in the good old days as your grand kids roll their eyes and shake their heads.

For most of the stations in the country that go All Christmas Music, the next few weeks until the end of the year will mean the largest audiences, longest TSL and most money made that they will see all year long. And you think they are stupid for doing it? If the vast majority of their audience didn't want to hear all christmas music all the time, they wouldn't see these type of increases. When the listeners decide that they don't like it anymore then the audience levels will decrease and the stations won't do it anymore.
Click to expand...

I'm in broadcasting, and I agree with you. In fact, I have some ideas about how other industries can learn from us broadcasters:

- The Super Bowl attracts by far the largest audience and most money the NFL sees all year long. Therefore, next year, I propose we hold twelve Super Bowls - the first Sunday of every month. Twelve times the excitement, twelve times the revenue.

- The 2007 N.C. State Fair drew record attendance of more than 800,000 for its 10-day run in October. So why is it only a 10-day event? Next year, let's start the Fair in mid-March and run it until November. Think of the money to be made!

- The church down the street from my house draws its biggest crowd of the year on December 24 for the Christmas Eve service. So I've suggested to the pastor that he hold Christmas Eve services twice a week starting around Halloween. Never too early to commemorate the season, right? (And think of the extra cash in the collection plate!)

... or, on the other hand, maybe what makes these "special events" special is that they're relatively rare - events that people look forward to all year and savor during the short time they occur. And maybe if we get too greedy, they lose that special mystique and just become another tiresome part of daily life ...
 
I just had a thought...perhaps CMG and CBC went into cahoots with each other so that CC's Christmas Kiss would be reduced to just a peck on the cheek...

Mayyyyybe? ???
 
Excellent points KBA. You did a much better job of demonstrating what I was trying to say. The "specialness" wears off of something when it's overdone. And then, you completely lose your appetitie for whatever it is. Sometimes I think that's what's wrong with our society. We don't know how to do anything in moderation. Hence the obesity problem. I guess it's just human nature, but whatever happened to discipline! ???
 
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