Some people in radio think it's a risk to play all holiday music in December. Rob Miller, program director of WALK (97.
5 FM), isn't among them. WALK, Long Island's biggest adultcontemporary station, took the plunge last year and can't wait to do it again. From the day after Thanksgiving, starting with Nat King Cole's "The Christmas Song," WALK will go all-holiday through Christmas Day. "We had played holiday music on WALK-AM for several years and had gotten a good response," says Miller. "But when we moved it to the FM last year, with a much stronger signal, the response was enormous. We had thousands of phone calls and E-mails.
" And good news from Arbitron, too. "Our ratings went up in December, and there was a strong carry-over to January," says Miller. "People tuned in for December, liked us and kept listening when we went back to our regular mix - which, of course, we'd been promoting.
" The singers heard during the holidays aren't all on WALK'S regular playlist. "At this time of year, people want songs their parents played under the tree," says Miller. "From our research, 'The Christmas Song' is the biggest favorite. "So in December we play artists like Andy Williams and Johnny Mathis, who would never be on our regular playlist. But they fit in - and fortunately, a lot of our core artists have made holiday records, so the overall sound is very consistent with the station.
" That means Celine Dion, Gloria Estefan and Mariah Carey. It means Madonna's "Santa Baby," not Eartha Kitt's, though the mix also includes five tracks from Phil Spector's Christmas album. While there aren't a lot of novelty songs, Adam Sandler's "The Chanukah Song" is in there. The most popular tunes, Miller says, might be heard twice during the day, then again late at night. What WALK found last year, says Miller, is that it kept its regular office listeners and picked up both in-home listeners and businesses looking to stoke the holiday mood. Perhaps partly because WALK'S holiday music worked so well, the top-rated station in the city, WLTW (106.
7 FM), will also play holiday music this year starting the day after Thanksgiving. WLTW is a sister station to WALK, and Miller says Lite's move won't do WALK any harm. "What they do won't affect us," he says. "They're huge in the city, we're huge on the Island.
" SCHOLARSHIPS: WQCD (101.
9 FM) is giving two $5,000 scholarships to high-school seniors interested in music careers. Get application forms at www.
cd1019.
com or Emigrant Savings Bank or by writing to Smooth Jazz Foundation Scholarship, P.
O. Box 141, Village Station, New York, NY 10014. AROUND THE DIAL: Cartoonist Art Spiegelman, author of "Maus," is Brian Lehrer's guest tomorrow on WNYC (820 AM, 93.
9 FM), 10 a.
m.-noon. Robert Plant is the guest this morning with Jim Kerr on WAXQ (104.
3 FM). WBGO host and producer Bob Porter recently was given the NAACP'S Freedom Fund Community Service Award. Jon Cohen, a member of the WBAI Local Advisory Board and longtime activist, died last month at 40. His partner, Liz Roberts, reported that he spent his last day peacefully listening to Grateful Dead music.