Happy Friday, everyone!
Does your station program an all-Christmas music format?
If so, 1) When do you switch to all-Christmas? 2) How do you advertise and promote it? and 3) What, if anything, do you special to attract advertisers?
Looking forward to reading your replies!
Yes, our station programs all-Christmas from the Saturday after Thanksgiving until December 25th.
Our advertisers have the option to sponsor a full day- which includes a :20 ad that runs every hour from midnight to midnight and says something along the lines of "Today's holiday music is brought to you by...". An advertiser is free to sponsor as many days as they wish; The more, the merrier.
To help attract advertisers, we reference national surveys that show a huge boost in listeners for all-holiday stations between Thanksgiving and Christmas (last year's statistics showed a 58% increase in the 25-54 demo). We also do our own internal surveys through our listeners (their customers). For our last survey, we polled 200 listeners- 84% of them voted for all-Christmas music.
Our Top 40 station flips to all Christmas music the day after Thanksgiving through Christmas Day. We sell a Christmas music sponsor that has their name mentioned twice per hour, every day. We also do what we call "$100 Holla Days"...for $100 a day the advertiser gets 10 fifteen second ads 5a-mid. They buy as many days as they want, $100 each. Gets them a lot of frequency. We also do a Toy Drive the day after Thanksgiving for a home for children and we sell a sponsor for that. This year we added an "Elf on the Shelf" promotion...have not sold it yet. Idea is hide the elf around town, post the picture on Facebook and listeners must call in with their guess of where the elf is. Winner received cash and an "Elf on the Shelf".
We convert our light rock format FM station to classic/traditional Christmas starting the first Monday in November and play through Christmas. We've been doing this for 14 years and it's been a strong program for us. Our main package is 4 ads a day through the entire flight for an package price. We generally sell 90%-100% of available packages. We also have many advertisers who buy regular flight advertising on the station.
Yes, we've done it for years and it is a ratings booster. We flip the switch day after Thanksgiving, and go solid Christmas music thru Christmas Day. On midnight of Christmas Eve, we host it in a non-commercial environment thru midnight of Christmas Day. We typically promote via on-air liners, and online banner space. Our regular listeners anticipate it. We sell sponsorship's for advertisers and did well with that last year. I just secured all 5 weeks by one advertiser yesterday.
Roger
Our News/Talk station does flip to all Christmas music Christmas Eve Day and through Christmas. We air no commercials. We do sell sponsorships for each hour. Where many customers are uncomfortable advertising on Christmas Eve and especially Christmas Day, sponsoring a commercial free hour of Christmas music is a great feel good to be associated with.
Our Hot AC stopped doing it 2 years ago because what we found was ratings go up when we kick it off in November, but the make up of the audience changes a lot. And then in January, we pay a steep price for that Nov/Dec increase.
When we would kick off the Christmas tunes in November, lose a decent % of the station's regulars who love the hits, but we pick up a lot of listeners from the country station and the oldies station (makes sense) which more than makes up for the loss. But then come January, we lose the country and oldies listeners and it takes until about March to rebuild the fan base of the regular format. All in all, not worth it. Better to sprinkle in the Christmas songs in between the hits than go all Christmas 24/7.
We start to sprinkle in Christmas music from Thanksgiving until two days before Christmas. Then, we go all Christmas music. When we go all Christmas, advertisers can sponsor an hour.
