Christmas music radio
Christmas music radio is a music radio format devoted to the playing of Christmas music.
Christmas music is a seasonal radio format. Radio stations that adopt the format traditionally carry some other format throughout the majority of the year, then drop that format entirely and switch exclusively to Christmas music for the holiday season. At minimum, the all-Christmas format runs through Advent and Christmas Day, with most stations playing the format for a large portion of November and often continuing more limited Christmas music for the week after Christmas.
The Christmas music radio format has its own core artists and songs, independent of whatever format the station normally runs; most stations mix this core with records more in line with their standard format. In the United States, this core consists of records substantially older than any commonly used radio format, with a large body of records dating to the 1940s through the early 1960s—an era that had otherwise largely been abandoned by mainstream radio formats by the early 2020s—remaining among the format's most popular. Canada and the United Kingdom generally draw upon records from the classic hits eras of the 1970s and 1980s.
History
The roots of the holiday format date to the 1970s, or even as far back as 1966 with the Yule Log television program, but Phoenix, Arizona, was critical to the format's popularization. In 1989, easy listening/adult standards formatted KMEO AM began airing Christmas music from the day after Thanksgiving to Christmas Day, the first local station to do so. KMEO changed formats in 1992; a year later, another local station, KOY, revived the format. KOY, like KMEO, was an adult standards station, with KOY's run with the format being a particular success; the core artists of the format at the time overlapped with those that remain popular in the all-Christmas format. Upstart station KTWC made the first attempt to bring the format to the FM dial in 1995, which was not reprised after the station was sold in May 1996. The general manager of KESZ "KEZ", an adult contemporary station in Phoenix, noted that KOY lured away many of KESZ's regular listeners during the holiday season and, in 1996, began programming Christmas music itself. Outside Phoenix, WWYZ in Waterbury, Connecticut, which was and remains a country music station, was reportedly the first to adopt an all-Christmas format in 1998.Clear Channel Communications purchased KESZ in 1999. By 2000, Clear Channel had begun testing the all-Christmas format in select markets outside Phoenix; the all-Christmas format reached Orlando, Florida, where WMGF launched an all-Christmas format on November 24. In light of the ratings and revenue increases that Christmas stations saw during and after the holidays, the format went national. In 2001, Clear Channel went all-Christmas at 75 stations, including some new markets like KOST in Los Angeles. Sean Ross of RadioInsight later credited the introduction at KOST as a "format tipping point". Entercom introduced the all-Christmas format on its adult contemporary stations the same year, including the station then known as WTSS. The September 11 attacks and subsequent desire for positive, comforting and nostalgic programming was a major inspiration for the introduction of all-Christmas programming in 2001, which included the revival of the Yule Log.
Business rationale
Although there is a chance that a station's normal audience may be alienated by a switch to all-Christmas music, these risks are outweighed by the increase in ratings that such a shift can attract. There is also a chance that after they return to regular programming, a station may be able to retain some of this expanded audience as new, regular listeners.Arbitron reported in 2011 that it was not uncommon for a station's average audience to double after switching to Christmas music, citing several large-market stations in 2010 such as Boston's WODS, Los Angeles's KOST, New York's WLTW, and San Diego's KYXY. In 2017, Chicago's WLIT-FM roughly quadrupled its audience share between November and December after making the switch. The practice may not always transition well into financial success, since advertisers do not universally recognize Nielsen's holiday ratings book. In some markets, there may be one dominant broadcaster of Christmas music, but this is not always the case; stations in competitive markets may observe an advantage to being first in their market to adopt the format, while other stations may change their formats to all-Christmas at the same time as their competitors to negate that advantage.
All-Christmas formats are appealing to advertisers, both because of the high listenership and because of the potential to place the listeners in the right mindset to want to do their holiday shopping.
Launch date
When all-Christmas formats began in test markets and in the early national rollout in 2000 and 2001, the format flip occurred on Black Friday, mirroring the traditional launch of the Christmas shopping season and the practice of the Phoenix stations. It is not uncommon for some stations to adopt the format prior to Thanksgiving, or even as early as late-October. The practice has been considered an example of Christmas creep.A handful of American radio stations have, since 2006, earned a reputation for regularly switching to Christmas music on November 1, the day after Halloween; as of 2011, this has not become the norm for most of North America. This mid-November benchmark allows the station to benefit from the ratings bump of flipping to all-Christmas across two months' worth of ratings books while keeping complaints from listeners who are irritated by a too-early change to a minimum. Earlier flips to Christmas music were noted in 2020, as broadcasters sought to alleviate some of the stress brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.
A sudden reversal of this trend occurred as the pandemic waned in 2022, as no station would adopt the all-Christmas format until October 28—and that station, the lone station to flip before November 1, had largely gone unnoticed until October 30; the trade Web site Radio Insight, which tracks the first-in-the-nation Christmas flips, erroneously stated that "it appears we will make it to Halloween without a radio station already having started playing Christmas music." In general, this later start was also observed in 2023; Radio Insight and Inside Radio both noted that the first station each noticed had changed to Christmas music was WMXL in Lexington, Kentucky, which did so at midnight October 31. Most outlets stopped tracking who was first in 2024, and Radio Insight counted a pre-acknowledged stunt by WLRS that began October 1 as the first; that year, among non-stunting stations, WLKK-HD2 changed on October 10, while the October 25 change of K252FO was the first of an analog signal, and no non-stunting, full-power AM or FM signal was known to make the switch until October 31, when WAKW in Cincinnati, Ohio made the switch. Radio Insight noted that while the creeping of early Christmas flips had largely stopped at October 31, more stations had flipped that day or in the first week of November than in years past. For 2025, the only station to flip permanently for the holiday season prior to Halloween was KLO-FM, which is in the midst of a stunt and a format change. Among non-stunting stations, WAKW was again the first with another October 31 flip. Among commercial stations, WTSS in Buffalo and WNOH in the Hampton Roads both changed midnight November 1.
The choice of November 1 has been regularly promoted by Mariah Carey, who regularly releases videos promoting her song "All I Want for Christmas Is You" on the morning of November 1 each year, transitioning from Halloween themes to Christmas settings as Carey declares "It's time!" Carey's song holds a narrow plurality among songs that American Christmas music radio stations use to signal the launch of the all-Christmas format, with five of the 20 stations that had changed before Veterans Day choosing that song and four choosing "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" by Andy Williams.
The Philippines are a prominent exception. Though the all-Christmas format there is exceptionally rare, radio stations often begin playing Christmas songs within their regular formats as early as September 1; the Filipino Christmas season runs from then throughout all of the "BER months". The Jose Mari Chan song "Christmas in Our Hearts" is the traditional launch anthem for the holiday season there. North American and British Christmas records are also popular.
Programming strategies in North America
The typical Christmas music format in the United States carries a mix of approximately 150 recordings, with a heavy focus on vocal adult standards and MOR selections from before 1970. Instrumental selections from that era, which generally fall under the beautiful music category, have historically been rarely heard and unpopular. Rob Lucas, who for 22 years served as music director and morning host for Star 102.5 in Buffalo, New York, outlined his scheduling formula for that station:- A wider library of core records—over 250 during the station's last season in existence—with 50 or so power rotation records replayed every four hours and most of the rest played two to three times per day;
- An emphasis on new releases and contemporary and/or upbeat selections, as this not only fit Star's regular format but helped play against the all-Christmas format's reputation of being slow and boring;
- A willingness to play local artists;
- Judicious spacing of similar records ;
- The withholding of novelty songs and other records that do not withstand recurrent rotation without complaints until later in the Christmas season.
As many Christmas songs contain themes strongly associated with Christmas Day, and popular observance of the Christmas season often ends after December 25, most stations typically end their all-Christmas programming at some point on December 25 or 26. If a station opts to continue playing Christmas songs beyond the date itself, Lucas advises that these songs be removed from the playlist, noting a substantial number of seasonal winter records still remain playable through the weekend following Christmas, or even through New Year's Day. Listenership to the all-Christmas format remains above the offseason baseline through, on average, two days after the Christmas holiday.
Christmas music stations in Canada tend to follow a similar pattern to those in the United States but with the addition of Canadian content; because of the relative lack of older Christmas music written or recorded in Canada and/or by Canadians, this leads to a more contemporary sound compared to most American stations.