So, whatareyall doing for Christmas/Holiday programming? I'm starting all Chritmas music on Thanksgiving. I've been a fanatical record collector since 1962, and have a forte' for gathering Christmas music -- I've been preparing for an amazing mix of Christmas music for my listeners. I already did a "Christmas Preview" back on the 16th of this month, as a couple area stores had holiday open houses, and they were quite delighted to put my station on throughout their stores to provide Christmas music.
Oddly, I'm running Christmas here through January 7th! Because in this area we have quite a few Eastern Orthodox folks -- what we refer to here as Serbian Christmas. They still use the old calendar and Christmas isn't until January 7th. So, I'm doing Christmas music till the 7th of January. Starting late afternoon on the 6th and till midnight on the 7th, I'm playing 100% Easter Orthodox Christmas music and church programs, many actually in Serbian! We used to do a couple hours of Serbian Christmas programming on the commercial station I work for on Serbian Christmas Eve, but we quit several years ago. I was able to contact several Orthodox churches across the country with help of a local Bishop who have provided me with many hours of good quality recorded services and Christmas programs. If nothing else I'm providing something completely not available for a small but dedicated segment of potential listeners. And the churches were quite excited to know their services would be heard by others! This is a clear example of what our stations can do -- provide specialized, very local programming to meet our specific audience -- specific programming that bigger stations can't or won't concern themselves with.
And the local small town paper wants to talk with me this week to do an article in the paper, so I can promote mu Christmas programming there too!
More Christmas to come!
Tim in Bovey
Iron Range Country
"On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, an AMT5000 from sstran.com"
On the church calendar the 12 days of Christmas start with Christmas Day December 25th being the 1st Day, and everyday thereafter being another until January 5th.
Tim in Bovey could match that up with his extended Christmas schedule, with Monday January 6 being a bonus 13th Day of Christmas and then the Serbian Christmas on the 7th.
Stores might want to get into the fun by staying open for all the many Christmas days, but don't tell the kids or they'll want gifts everyday.
Yeah, we've always left the Christmas lights on in the yard/house until january 7th for Serbian Christmas (we're not Serbian, BTW).
But THIS year...
OK, so I'm kind of a Christmas light nut, and I collect blow-molds (Santa, Reindeer, Snowmen, Toy Soldiers, you name it) those are the big hard plastic blow molded decorations with a real light bulb inside... so I put up a LOT of light up stuff in the yard.
This year I bought a Color Organ. For those of you who were old enough in the 70's, you might remember these types of things. Basically, what I've got is a box that plugs into the wall, has an audio input, and three different power outlets. Each outlet has a variable sensitivity control. You connect an audio feed (naturally the Christmas music from my station) and then connect the outputs to different sets of lights, decorations, blowmolds, whatever. The color organ divides the audio into bass, mid and hi and uses those different signals to activate the lights to the music, within their corresponding frequencies. Blue lights could be bass, green could be mid, treble could be red, etc. Or a row of snowmen could be bass, toy soldiers could be mid, and Mary, looking down at Baby Jesus could be the high frequencies -- whatever you come up with. I haven't figured out my plan yet. Then when you fire it up, the lights work with the music. The key here is....
BIG SIGN in the front yard, white, red letters, painted on plywood, illuminated with flood lights "Christmas Music Tune to 1620 AM" Instant publicity and a bit o' fun. In my small town this is pretty amusing stuff. And I might pick up a few more listeners.
Tim in Bovey
Iron Range Country
December brings the darkest and longest nights of the year and it might get depressing, but with our power to light it up everyone feels much more cheerful.
Lighting the place up can be a good promotion for the radio station.
FROM 1620 "THE LIGHT"
Darkness and cold conspire at year's end to inspire holiday thoughts, as a way of cheering up and spreading fun.
Radio stations have a special place in the mixture because we fill the night with audio light and the sound of ...... and that's where my thoughts trail off.
The thinking process itself is but another low power medium, coming from brainwave frequencies in the 6 to 24 Hz range, below the 9 kHz lower limit of FCC jurisdiction, which means we could legally amplify our thoughts up to 100 kW, and Dogradiostudio2 has tried making amplifier hat-ware, or maybe it's hat-wear, for this purpose.
Normal thinkers think about things they know, but inventors try to think about things not yet known, such as covering a city with 100 mW or winning a Nobel Peace Prize for War, which one guy actually did.
The word holiday comes from the word "hollow," unless it comes from the word "Holy." What's odd about it is that Thanksgiving has no special music to go along with it, and this is a problem for radio programmers. The void is filled by starting the following holiday ahead of schedule.
Christmas music is the perfect example of commercial jingles in Trojan guise as pop tunes, reminding listeners to buy until the calendar dies a natural death.
For the audience, give radios. For stations, get transmitters.
sstran.com
Actually one of our favorite Christmas songs is actually a Thanksgiving song. Jingle Bells was written specifically as a song about traveling for Thanksgiving dinner. It has NO reference to Christmas in it anywhere. Further "jingle bells" or "sleigh bells" also have no connection to Christmas. During three seasons of the year, back in the day, people travelled by horse, or with horse and wagon. It was easy to hear and see "traffic" coming. In the dark of winter people switched over to using a sleigh to get around with those same horses. Sleighs and horses hooves on snow are nearly silent and approaching sleigh drivers couldn't hear others coming from the curve up ahead, etc. Sleigh bells were added specifically so drivers could hear each other approaching. Some cities actually passed laws requiring sleigh bells for safety!
Winter Wonderland is simply a winter song. No Christmas reference. Frosty the Snowman is also not a Christmas song. Frosty is simply a snowman who came to life with the use of a magic hat. Years later, when they made the TV special (I believe it was a Rankin/Bass production) they introduced Santa into the story. Rudolph was a character created for a Montgomery Wards advertisement on their Christmas Catalog in, I believe 1939. Gene Autry made a hit song out of him. Marhmallow World is also simply a winter song.
There are others, but I can't think of 'em all at once! If you want Thanksgiving songs you need to check a Lutheran Hymnal!
Tim in Bovey
Iron Range Country
My brainwaves run very fast. 60 kHz.
I calibrate myself to WWVB every day.
But seriously folks - really really great
references to all of those songs.
I didn't know any of that stuff.
Extremely cool. (No pun intended.)
Bruce, DOGRADIO
Blare OnAir Lite No. 17, "Greenwillow," is a 10-minute free program for Part 15 stations with rare performances of "Greenwillow Christmas," both the vocal and instrumental versions, from a Frank Loesser broadway musical that closed after only a week in 1960. The actor Anthony Perkins had the starring role, the story was taken from a novel by the same name.
http://kdxradio.com/blare_lite.html