So how do radio programmers pick holiday music for their stations?
The old-fashioned way: When the holidays roll around, many execs take a break from focus groups and market research and simply pick songs that they like.
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“It’s almost a holiday from really tight formatting, which is what defines American radio right now,” says Scott Fybush, editor of the online radio site 100000watts.com. “When are you going to hear Burl Ives or Adam Sandler on the radio the rest of they year? The holiday music format really gives stations a chance to flex their wings, and a lot of the programmers have fun with it.”
“We’ll mix [holiday] music that spans decades — we’ll play classic Nat King Cole right next to brand-new stuff by Sheryl Crow and Whitney Houston,” says Bob Kaake, program director of Chicago’s WLIT-FM, a soft-rock station not known for playing Crow’s rock ‘n’ roll tracks.
Radio insiders all say tasteful versions of traditional carols — as opposed to newly written Christmas songs — usually top the holiday playlist.
The audience “just wants to hear the stuff that everybody knows. That’s what makes it approachable for such a broad demographic,” says WNND’s program manager David J., who says listeners are asking for “The Christmas Song,” “Winter Wonderland” and the Bryan Setzer Orchestra’s version of “Jingle Bells.”
Though some smaller stations subscribe to a preformatted holiday-music broadcasting service, big stations in cities such as Chicago create their own playlists, adding a few new holiday songs every year, according to Tom Taylor of Inside Radio magazine.
“There’s tons of Christmas music out there — every established artist has done a Christmas album, and Christmas albums never go away,” Taylor says. “They’re evergreens; you just pull them off the shelf.”
One song you might not hear much on the radio is the novelty hit “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.”
Tony Florentino of New Orlean’s WCKW-FM says his research on holiday music has found that “parody songs are always at the bottom of the list. People just don’t want to hear them.”
“My guess is that people find them distasteful because of the nature of the holiday — it’s not in keeping with the spirit of Christmas,” he notes.