If your station is rockin’ around the Christmas tree, it’s likely that Brenda, Burl and Bobby are leading the charge. Among the nearly 300 radio outlets tracked by StationIntel currently airing all-Christmas, it’s the classics that are continuing to lure listeners. According to programmers, those songs simply conjure—and solidify—the magic memories of the season.
“We have a 70-year age span in our Christmas database,” says Amber Lee, operations manager for Cumulus Media-Topeka, KS. “The playlist at ‘Majic 107.7’ KMAJ Topeka is full of Christmas classics like Brenda [Lee] and Burl [Ives]. I really have to massage the logs so you don’t get all those hits from the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s lumped together.”
Adds Chuck Knight, PD of “101.1 More-FM” WBEB Philadelphia, “Christmas music is a trip down memory lane for most of our listeners, so we focus on the traditional songs by the traditional artists. It’s led by Andy Williams, Dean Martin and the Christmas TV shows…Charlie Brown, Rudolph, Grinch…the 60s.”
A look at Mediabase year-to-date spins for the Holiday format reveals that “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” the 1958 classic from Brenda Lee, tops with 12,862 spins as of Thurs. afternoon (Dec. 8). Burl Ives’ 1964 “A Holly Jolly Christmas” is just behind, with 12,794 plays; followed by Bobby Helms’ “Jingle Bell Rock” (note: It’s a very Merry Christmas at Decca, the record label for all three hits) and then “Jose Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad,” the latter two also with more than 12,000 spins each.
Rounding out the Holiday top 10: Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas,” “Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song,” Andy Williams’ “Most Wonderful Time Of The Year,” Wham!’s “Last Christmas,” Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s “Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24” and “Johnny Mathis’ “It’s Beginning To Look a Lot Like Christmas.” From there, we have leading titles from John Lennon, Bing Crosby, the Ronettes, Vince Guaraldi (“Linus and Lucy”), Band-Aid and Gene Autry.
To find a song that is considered “recurrent” instead of “gold” requires scrolling down to No. 62 on the Mediabase Holiday YTD list for Idina Menzel’s “Baby It’s Cold Outside” with 4,086 spins, or Pentatonix with “That’s Christmas To Me” with 1,524 spins at No. 162.
But that doesn’t mean stations aren’t willing to toss the occasional surprise treat into the mix. KMAJ’s Lee adds that she keeps the station “fresh” each year by playing two current Christmas releases every hour: “They may be a current act covering a classic song, or a new release from a current act, which we brand heavily.”
And Cumulus “Warm 98.5” WRRM Cincinnati is playing Josh Groban, Rascal Flatts and Train, among others, with “new, albeit traditional holiday songs,” PD Brian Demay tells Inside Radio. “We focus on the classics, because research tells us that Burl, Brenda, Andy Williams, Nat King Cole and the Carpenters are still what people think of when they remember Christmas music. But we keep the mix fresh every year by rotating in a small number of contemporary or ‘current’ songs.”
