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Mike McVay , President, McVay Media
Mike McVay is founder and President of McVay Media, a full-service consultancy, serving Adult Contemporary, Country, CHR, Oldies, Rock, Sports, and News/Talk radio stations. McVay’s 35 years of broadcast experience include stints as an Owner, General Manager, Program Director, and Air Personality.
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It’s been more than 10 years now that we’ve been playing 100% Christmas music on many Adult Contempories around the country with other formats (Country, Oldies, Nostalgia, Smooth Jazz) joining the lemming-like run off the cliff. It is my expectation that we will again this year see some great ratings results from those stations that went 100% Christmas music from Thanksgiving to Christmas Day. However, it puzzles me as to why some broadcasters (generally the Johnny-Come-Lately’s) find it impossible to play the hits. Christmas is about memories. It’s about great songs and traditions. That doesn’t meant you can’t play new music by new artists, but it does mean that we as listeners should never be more than one song from a monster song. Brand new music should only be coming up once in a 30 minute span. Everything else should be classic.
The family and I made a trip from Cleveland, Ohio four hours south to a resort in the Laurel Mountains we like to go to every Christmas holiday. We had a lot of time on Christmas day to listen to the radio as we drove. The AC stations that we heard along the way were generally on target with the Christmas titles they played and the order in which they were aired. The preponderance of the bad Christmas songs I heard came from the stations that do Christmas “part time.” Someone somewhere obviously took the attitude; “its Christmas Eve and Christmas Day who cares?” just play anything with the word Christmas in it. “That’s shocking.” How can anyone give away 48 hours of audience?
The next time you have the opportunity to bring an audience into your radio station, one that may not normally be there, not only should you play the best-of-the-best, but you should run promos and introduce this visitor to what you station does the other 363 days a year. Ask any sales rep, the value of air time is too valuable to throw it away.
10 Tips for Christmas 2008:
1. The Classics (Super Powers) should turn over as if your station is a CHR. We should hear White Christmas by Bing Cosby every three hours – 45 minutes.
2. No more than one new Christmas title per hour.
3. Newer songs (Recurrents) by newer artists, should be scheduled with no more than per 30 minutes and surrounded by Super Powers.
4. Hold off on playing the more religious-like songs God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Hark The Harold Angels Sing, Silent Night (until December 15).
5. Run Christmas greetings from the staff and their children.
6. Air Christmas greetings from sponsors, but do not allow them to become commercials or short sales announcements.
7. Air promos that tell the listener what you normally do when playing regular format.
8. Tell listeners what you are doing is special.
9. Code the instrumentals so you play no more than one per 20 minutes/3 maximum per hour.
10. Be sure the air staff sounds normal and natural. They should not suddenly become “beautiful music” announcers.
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