UPDATE: It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like …
UPDATE: Rosenthal is reporting that WLIT will flip to Christmas music today.
As the first snowflakes of the season began to fall yesterday, visions of huge ratings filled the heads of some Chicago broadcasters. It’s that time of year again — time to ditch the usual playlist and crank up the Christmas tunes.
Last year, as many might remember, WLIT experienced premature holiday jubliation when WCKG threatened to flip from its FM talk format to a light AC format in the finals days of October. All reports indicated that WCKG would stunt with Christmas music until the end of the year.
Instead, WCKG held back until WLIT flipped on the Christmas Lite on November 2. Then, after some brief stunting, WCKG became Fresh GM and launched its non-Christmas playlist, giving it nearly two months of no competition, while WLIT played the yuletide tunes.
What will happen this year? By all accounts, WLIT is ready to pull the trigger, but they may be gun shy after being pushed into the move last year.
This will be the first year that the Christmas season in Chicago radio will be measured by Arbitron’s new PPM technology, which will include a special “holiday” book for the weeks surrounding Christmas. In past year’s, WLIT has enjoyed a huge boost in the fall ratings book because of their Christmas music programming.
And more importantly, who wants to hear Christmas music this early? Anyone? Let’s at least hope that WLIT waits until after Halloween. That would be the only respectable thing to do.
WLIT has a poll on their website asking people when they should do the flip. WLIT wants so bad for people to vote “switch now,” but I tend to agree that most people are share the same boat of not wanting to hear Christmas music until either a few days before Thanksgiving or just afterwards.