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When did the 24/7 christmas music stations start and by whom?

You probably know this one (unless you've been listening to KZON all this time) but Phoenix AC KESZ started their Christmas music at the same time as Classic Hits KOOL, 5pm on November 7. However, KOOL started the Christmas music BEFORE, starting at 5pm on Halloween Friday, and ending 8am Monday morning.

Good question. I wonder who started before Halloween?
 
Thanks but i also wonder what year did all christmas music start for one month at the minimum sometimes more now.The first year i remember all christmas all the time was in the year 2000 when i was living in los angeles then the adult standard station on the am was all christmas for a month but prior to that i just remember stations playing christmas music on the weekends in december. I am not complaining i like christmas music but they do all pretty much play the tradional stuff.

Was it 2000 or before?
 
Seems like 2001 was a turning point. In the weeks and months after 9/11, people needed entertainment "comfort food", so to speak, and that's when a lot more stations went all-Christmas for a month (now nearly 2 months in a lot of cases). Before that, I can remember our big regional Christian station (WBCL in Fort Wayne) going all-Christmas for a couiple weeks; Even then, it wasn't 24/7, because they aired quite a bit of ministry-oriented block programming at various times during the day. Unfortunately, you can't really unring that particular bell, especially when many AC's experience their highest ratings during Santa time, but IMO, it takes a lot of the "specialness" away from Christmas music that you got when it was done the old way (usually starting with, say, 1 song an hour right after Thanksgiving and then gradually increasing it to maybe 3 or 4 an hour over the next month, and finally going all-Christmas at some point on Christmas Eve.
 
WLS may have been the first in 1995 on FM as they dropped the talk simulcast and went Xmas before debuting a short lived country format
 
Philadelphia's Sunny 104.5 kicked off all-Christmas in 2002, and enjoyed a big rating boost after having Christmas all to itself that year.

WTTH 96.1 in Atlantic City started the Christmas music in October trend. WIBC 93.1 in Indianapolis and WMVN 101.1 in St Louis are pioneering the trend of 3 months of Christmas music as a stunt.
 
Hi Patrick,

The earliest example I can think of of an AC station going all-Christmas that wasn't part of a stunt or format change is that of WRVF-FM (101.5 The River) in Toledo, Ohio, which has been going all-Christmas since 1995. That was the year that the station dropped its former WLQR-FM identity (it had been a Beautiful Music station under those calls until about 1987 or so) and became WRVF. "Christmas On The River" has been a tradition in Toledo since. There may have been other AC stations that did it even before WRVF, but if so I'm not aware.

I have heard that WOKY-AM in Milwaukee during its Adult Standards days was one of the first all-Christmas stations in the country, if not the first. Dial Global's America's Best Music (formerly WW1 AM Only) network has been going all-Christmas for several years now and since WOKY used to be an affiliate of that format, it is possible that this was based on WOKY's example. I'm not sure e

What Corky mentions re: all-Christmas formats really taking off in 2001, with the 9/11 tragedy taking place only months earlier, is my recollection as well. WOOD-FM 105.7 in Grand Rapids, MI dropped its longstanding "EZ105.7" identity over Thanksgiving Weekend of 2001 and relaunched as "Star 105.7" with all-Christmas, and I can remember one of the on-air promos they used to promote the change said, "Because we need a little Christmas now." As I recall, WRVF also started "Christmas On The River" earlier that year.

One of WOOD-FM's AC competitors, Soft AC/MOR hybrid WTRV (100.5 The River), was another early Christmas-music convert; as I recall, they started in 1999, or possibly '98. Ever since 2001 Grand Rapids has had at least two all-Christmas stations competing for the holiday music audience, though WTRV got out of the Christmas music battle last year and its sister station 95.7 WLHT went all-Christmas instead (as it did again this year). I say at least two stations because Grand Rapids also had a WW1 America's Best Music station (810 WMJH) for a time (now Spanish), which gave the market three choices for continuous holiday music.
 
Sorry... must have passed the Edit deadline. What I meant to say at the end of paragraph two was, I'm not sure exactly when the WW1/Dial Global all-Christmas flips started though. The first year I noticed it was 2002 when 1600 WAAM in Ann Arbor aired the WW1 format on weekends.
 
Nick said:
Philadelphia's Sunny 104.5 kicked off all-Christmas in 2002, and enjoyed a big rating boost after having Christmas all to itself that year.






i remember the first year they did & it came out of nowhere

then the next christmas came sunny 104.5 did a christmas music weekend and it ended on sunday night @ 12am then 3 days later b101.1 flipped to all christmas @ 3pm on a wed sunny did not flip that night until @ least 7pm first song was war is over by jhon lennon
 
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