ALL-CHRISTMAS FORMAT’S SURPRISE DEMO

BING AND HIS BUDDIES’ MOST ENTHUSIASTIC FANS ARE—WHO?

I recently spoke with a friend who has been an air personality—a terrific one, I might add—at a major market soft AC station for many years. This station does very well year-round and, like many of its format ilk, plunges into an all-Christmas music format around Thanksgiving. In fact, it’s already starting. What’s newsworthy about that to me and to radio station managers in any format is how the station’s demographic alters when White Christmas and the rest begin to roll.

Want to take a guess at what consistently turns out the be the most enthusiastic and appreciative age group for Chestnuts, Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree and all the rest? (No fair if you already air the format and have discovered this yourself.)

According to my friend, the soft AC jock...it’s Generation Y.

This demo is loosely defined as people born between about 1986 and 2000—in other words, 10 to 24 years of age. The children aside, what my friend has observed is that listeners in their late teens and early twenties—definitely not your average soft AC P1 demo—flock to the all-holiday format every year about this time. Yes, the same bunch that normally listens to everything from Death Rock to Keith Urban loves to hear the good old Christmas classics, at least for a few weeks out of the year.

Why on earth would this bunch, which was virtually raised on iTunes, get excited about the same old holiday retreads? Ask the air personalities who work the format.

In this case, my friend’s view is that these kids welcome holiday music as a pleasant change from their usual instant-gratification diet of iPod fare. Perhaps, too, a little touch of homey normalcy to an age group that may be the most heavily-scheduled, stressed-out bunch in history. (I have an 18-year-old. I'm right in the thick of it.)

That prompted me to cruise over to the iTunes Store and see what was cooking for the holidays. A lot of holiday music, that’s what! They’re offering a package of up to 20 Christmas and holiday song downloads free for a week. It’s called iTunes Holiday Sampler and includes artists such as Sarah McLachlan, Amy Grant—and who wouldn’t want to fire up We Wish You A Merry Christmas by Weezer?

Not to be outdone, Amazon is also offering some free holiday music downloads through its MP3 store.

So, obviously, Gen Y has plenty of holiday ho-ho available for its MP3 players. But the news to me was that they’re also ready and willing to actually listen to the radio (and to a station they might well never sample otherwise) to help get in the holiday mood.

Which, of course, is solid platinum for sales.

Let’s see, with soft AC (the most common format employing the all-holiday music format, though by no means the only one), we have:

• A large core of steady, loyal listeners already in place
• Incredible TSL numbers, much beloved by Arbitron’s PPM
• And a hefty side dish of unexpectedly young listeners who sample the format

Give me a list, I’m hittin’ the street!

I still don’t go for lighting up the all-Christmas format even before most listeners are lighting up their holiday displays. As I wrote some days ago in this space, it borders on overkill, which will dependably kill an otherwise valuable format. But my friend’s observations about the attraction of Gen Y listeners to the format does make it a solid temporary format—providing no one else in your market is doing it, of course.

There’s only so much room for Bobby Helms.

AVOIDING HOLIDAY MUSIC TUNEOUTS

WALL-TO-WALL CHRISTMAS MUSIC? LET’S THINK ABOUT THIS...

It’s time to re-think wall-to-wall Christmas music. Not the concept—the execution. That’s because the annual switchover to an all-holiday music format is creeping earlier and earlier every year. Like the so-called Black Friday day-after-Thanksgiving sales, some stations are even now jumping into 24/7 Christmas music. Even more than the early start date,  there’s a real issue with the size of the holiday music library most stations will program. That issue is a tune-out factor every year and it’s worse when the same limited list of songs is played ad nauseum for an even longer period of time.

You know the suspects. A couple of years ago, ASCAP revealed the top holiday songs in terms of radio airplay. The top ten:

1.  The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire)

     Nat “King” Cole

2.  Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas—The Pretenders

3.  Winter Wonderland—Eurythmics

4.  Santa Claus Is Coming To Town—Bruce Springsteen

5.  White Christmas—Bing Crosby

6.  Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!—Andy Williams

7.  Jingle Bell Rock—Bobby Helms

8.   Little Drummer Boy—Harry Simeone Chorale

9.  Sleighride—The Ronettes

10. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer—Gene Autry

Now, if you (or your listeners) are inclined to say, “Awwwww, I love those songs!”, that’s fine. Nostalgia is important to many people over the holidays. And if you’re running a soft A/C station that programs all-Christmas songs every year, you probably clean up from a sales standpoint. But like everything else Americans seem to do, stretching a good thing until it’s too much is easy to do.

Think about it: there are over 500 recorded versions of White Christmas. Whose do you expect to hear on the radio? Right.

No matter how tight your playlist usually is, no matter how much your station has bought into the Christmas music franchise for your market, you will drive listeners away with too much of the same old stuff.

This is Radio 101, folks. Yet every year, managers and program directors throw basic programming sense out the window around (and now considerably before) Thanksgiving.

True, many stations have tried to make their holiday playlists a little more hip. Thus the inclusion of Springsteen, The Pretenders and the Eurythmics in the above list. But one thing is certain: almost every Christmas album that comes out, whether it’s rock, country, jazz or anything else, is likely to contain a dozen or so songs from the same list of about fifty holiday standards. Lack of fresh content is a serious concern to holiday programmers. Even with new artists, it’s still the same old songs. There are exceptions, of course. Welcome, Katy Perry and a few others and thank you very much.

For the same reason that short-playlist oldies stations—and some rotate among fewer than 400 songs—can become stale very quickly, a short and too-familiar holiday playlist can  turn listeners and advertisers away. The classics age all too soon when only one or two versions are aired. For novelty songs, it’s even worse. I mean, how much nostalgia do listeners really have for I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus? I Yust Go Nuts At Christmas? Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer? Please.

You can apply a personal litmus test to holiday music to gain some perspective on what your listeners will have to endure over the coming weeks. Simply ask yourself: What Christmas songs make me lunge for the “off” button?

My top two are Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree and Jungle Bell Rock. Yours might be different but I’ll bet they’re on or near the above list of top ten holiday  radio songs. What does that say?

Playing familiar music is the backbone of many radio formats. Playing a tight (in some cases, fewer than 150 songs) list of holiday songs, some of which aren’t even good, over and over for weeks is a yearly tradition at some stations.  But starting holiday sales at Halloween instead of Thanksgiving Friday smacks of desperation in the retail community. Doesn’t converting to all-holiday music earlier and earlier every year say much the same thing about the radio stations that do it?

If you’re going to do that, fatten up the playlist with new artists, different titles, unusual takes on familiar standards. Anything fresh. The longer you plan to air holiday songs, the fresher—and bigger—the playlist should be.

This year, take a stand. Vow to avoid holiday music tuneouts. And whatever you do, play another version of White Christmas!