Radio Stations Who Went "All-In" For Christmas Getting Depressed, Too

You know those stations that go 'all-in' with Christmas music during the holiday season?  You love them, right?  Well, you're not alone.  And that switch to X-mas music isn't done out of the kindness of the station manager's heart.  Nope.  It is big dollars.

See exhibit A:  In Milwaukee, the top rated station station in town is WRIT-FM 95.7.  They normally play classic rock.  Or 'classic hits' in the parlance of the industry.  They're normally #1 in the market.

But they change over to Christmas tunes in December.  And that drives them even higher.  But what happens in January?  We all get depressed, right?  So to, does their station manager, we think.

From the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

Christmas music giveth, and it taketh away — but the lack of it didn't take away enough of the audience to knock WRIT-FM (95.7) from its perch atop the Milwaukee radio market. 

The classic-hits station, one of two radio stations to go all-in with Christmas music through the holidays, dropped from an 11.2 share during that period to an 8.8 share in January, according to Nielsen Audio ratings numbers posted by industry newsletter Tom Taylor Now.

Despite the drop, it was still far ahead of the rest of the field among overall listeners in Milwaukee during the January ratings period, which covered Jan. 4 through Feb. 1.

Adult-contemporary WLDB-FM (93.3), the other station to jingle all the way during the holidays, dropped from an 8.3 share during the holidays to a 4.6 in January.

Pretty incredible, right?  From an 11.2 to a 8.8?  That's like 1/3rd of the audience just disappearing for one station.  And from an 8.3 to a 4.6 is almost half of the audience going 'poof'.