Reflections: Christmas Music on Radio!

Just when you thought Christmas was behind us and all of the all-Christmas-music stations had returned to regular programming, here comes Marlin bringing it up again!

During this Christmas season of 2019, I’ve had the opportunity to listen to two all-Christmas music-programmed stations which, going back 40-plus years, aired Christmas musical programming as created by yours truly. The first is B101.1 in Philadelphia, formerly known as WDVR. This is how I describe our first December on the air in my memoir, RADIO, My Love, My Passion … the year was 1963:

“Not having any commercials to air, I conceived of calling our all-holiday music programming on Christmas Eve and Day our first annual Christmas Festival of Music to set it apart from our regular programming. While there might have been stations elsewhere which played a full diet of holiday-oriented music for the day-and-a-half period, I was not aware of them. Most stations that I knew, if they aired any Christmas-themed programming, offered mostly hour and half-hour specialty shows. However, by Christmas 1964, numerous stations across the country had picked up on the nonstop holiday music approach.”

For us, from that very first year, we began inserting holiday tunes into the mix shortly after Thanksgiving, just a few per hour at first and slowly building — with the sacred, familiar carols added beginning in the second week of December — until Christmas recordings occupied a fairly heavy percentage of each hour’s music by the time we reached Christmas week and Christmas Eve.

Through those first few years, we did not begin the Festival until 9 p.m. on Christmas Eve and actually were including some regular songs by later on Christmas Day. As the years passed, it was expanded to 30 hours and then to 36, beginning at Noon on Christmas Eve. And, all non-holiday selections had been dropped.

This approach to the airing of the music of the holidays — first on the three individual stations that I either programmed and/or managed through the 1960’s in Philadelphia, Boston and New York City and then on well over 100 stations in metropolitan areas across the nation during the 1970’s and 80’s — apparently was satisfactory to our listenership as complaints were virtually nil, yet we received many plaudits every year.

All quite a comparison to that which began in the last years of the 20th century and continues today … at least one radio station in every market of any size across the country playing non-stop Christmas music for as much as six weeks leading up to Christmas.

The second former Bonneville/Marlin Taylor-programmed station is WHOM, transmitting from the top of Mount Washington, New Hampshire. Even though nearly a hundred miles to the south, it comes in like a local station in Manchester, New Hampshire, where we celebrated the family Christmas in the home of granddaughter Shannon and her family.

First known as WWMT, we began programming the station in the middle of the Christmas season of 1971 when it was acquired by a gentleman named Norm Alpert. While Norm sold the station in the early 1980’s, we’d continue as the programming supplier until 1990.

Jumping ahead to just two weeks ago … just prior to flying to New Hampshire, I posted this comment on my Facebook page:

“I’m about to head to New Hampshire to spend Christmas with a dozen of my offspring spanning three generations. If not doing that, my preference would be to be in Hawaii. Since I’m not, I am getting in the spirit of the Islands with this Christmas melody … ”

… and linked to Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters singing their 1940’s hit, Mele Kalikimaka, which is Merry Christmas in Hawaiian. What would you know … shortly after one of my tune-in’s to WHOM, what do they play? This exact recording! I guess those in the “north country” have the same desire … escape to a warmer climate.

Where and when did the concept of playing a steady diet of Christmas tunes for a month or more leading up to the big day begin? I posed the question to the radio industry’s format historian, Sean Ross … he couldn’t provide a firm answer. However, he did lead me to KESZ 99.9 FM in Phoenix, which the Arizona Republic newspaper reports began the annual tradition in 1997, meaning this year was its 23rd year! Was “KEZ” the first, or did a station elsewhere launch the concept earlier? Can you tell me?

Would this concept have flown and been as successful as it’s been over the past 20 years back in the 1960’s and 70’s? (If you are not connected to the broadcast industry, you may not know that radio stations continue this all-Christmas formula because they year-after-year experience a huge increase in listenership over their regular programming.) I question because those who listened to my stations “back then” are essentially the same people who subscribed to XM Radio and now SiriusXM to listen to Escape and the 1940’s/Savoy Express channels — and tens of thousands of whom become very agitated when senior management usurps one or the other for airing one of the all-Christmas formats.

How many more years of life does this all-holiday-music format have? Endless? Or will tastes, interest eventually change? For now though, as former B101.1 program director Chuck Knight once observed to me, “it’s about tradition” … a yearning for the good old days, “a trip down memory lane to a happier, simpler, easier time.”

As stations every year continue to play the Christmas songs and recordings — which make up a fair percentage of the mix on most stations — which were released in the 20 or so years following the end of the Second World War, two questions come to mind: 1) How many more years will listeners continue to find these desired ones to hear; and 2) Where are the songwriters who will compose melodies which will become new standards in the holiday season?

What are your thoughts on the subject? Please, please let me and others read them!

Image Credits: Header Image: WBEB on Web

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