Philadelphia Weekly

Christmas music. Love it or hate it, these sappy, shmaltzy tunes come like clockwork every year. But with local radio stations fighting against the iPod onslaught and battling for listeners, program directors have found new ways to connect with Christmas-crazed knob jockeys everywhere. Fact is, people love this stuff, and these tunes can mean big dough for the stations playing them. So who is? We offer a handy guide below. Seek out or avoid per your own tolerance.

B101

This family-owned easy-listening giant is known across Philadelphia as the station favored by your grandma and the lady in your office who wears kitten sweatshirts four days a week. But once the winter rolls around, B101 sprouts a Santa hat and becomes a peppermint-scented Christmas juggernaut, jamming more jolly down your throat than you can shake a sleigh bell at. Their 24-hour Christmas playlists are perfect for people looking to get down with the same Jackson 5 and Johnny Mathis holiday hits they’ve heard since childhood.

Not only is this practice festive and more than a little annoying, it’s also stupid profitable.

“We usually see our ratings double. Make no mistake, this is our Super Bowl,” says B101 program director Chuck Knight. “Anything the other radio stations do pales in comparison.” According to the Arbitron ratings report, B101 sees a four-point jump from October to November, a higher one-month increase than any music station in Philadelphia.

The science doesn’t stop there. Every October, B101 commissions focus groups, playing seven-second snippets of Christmas songs to selected listeners at a hotel convention center to determine their rotation. They also conduct an online poll in which listeners answer questions about what songs they want to hear and when they want to start hearing them. This year, the consensus was November 15th.

“We have worked long and hard to get this franchise. We usually don’t get challenged, and when we do, we wind up winning quite handsomely,” Knight says.

Clear Channel

Even with its merciless stranglehold over Philadelphia, this media giant hasn’t quite figured out how to manage the five local radio stations they own. As their listener base tends to skew young with stations like Radio 104.5, Q102 and Power 99, new advances in music technology are a big threat to Clear Channel.

But they didn’t get to be a household name without a fight. Making a concerted effort to win the streaming battle, Clear Channel released its first iPhone application titled iheartradio last year and have since released a Blackberry version. To date, iheartradio offers access to over 350 radio stations from across the country.

They’re taking the same online focus when it comes to Christmas music. All but abandoning holiday tunes on air, Clear Channel has created personalized streaming holiday stations by genre. There is Xmas Lites, Holiday Jams (hip-hop), Country Christmas and the Holiday Mix, which even has a smattering of Hanukkah songs.

WXPN

As a member-supported project, WXPN doesn’t rely on ratings to succeed. And according to program director Bruce Warren, Christmas is not a determining factor to their listenership or membership.

“If we were a commercial station, we may want to compete with a B101 to play some of those more interesting Christmas songs that come out every year,” Warren says. “But we don’t have to. Instead, we can continue to please our listeners, who are interested in variety and a connection to local acts.”

WXPN’s Christmas efforts have focused on involving the local music scene. While DJs have blended a few of the more eclectic Christmas songs in with their regular programming, the 12 Days of Local Music is where WXPN gets its jollies. Every weekday leading up to Christmas, WXPN has played a new holiday carol by a local artist. Huffamoose reunited to bring the world a vision of unity with “Hanukkah and Christmas Hand in Hand” and Drexel darlings the Swimmers brought some psychedelia to “That Christmas Sound.” The songs premiere on the WXPN Morning Show and are available for download at xpn.org.

WMMR

In what seems like a reaction to B101’s methodical holiday hemorrhage, WMMR has traditionally steered clear of Christmas music until a few weeks before the big day, when their listeners begin demanding it. With a DJ live on the air 24 hours a day, WMMR takes requests via email, text and over the phone from listeners. When the calls get to be too much, the Christmas bacchanalia can begin. As Philly’s favorite two-tone-bearded DJ Pierre Robert puts it, “we just vibe it out.”

“If we didn’t play some of the stuff, like Bruce’s ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’ or [Upper Darby singer-songwriter] Allen Mann’s ‘Christmas on the Block,’ we would hear from our listeners. But we try not to go overboard,” Robert says. “Where we do go overboard is in the decorating area.”

When WMMR moved out of Philadelphia to a Bala Cynwyd office park, Robert and a gang of associates he calls his “Elves” decided they wanted to decorate the studio with the most garish, tasteless Christmas decorations they could find. They wouldn’t stop, Robert vowed, until the place looked like “Liberace on acid.” Robert’s Christmas Caravan of Love has been trekking to the G Boys Christmas Emporium in Marlton, N.J., ever since. The station broadcasts the decorating on its webcam and plays a few hours of Christmas music to get the gang in the mood. ■