For roughly a decade, it’s been more noteworthy when a Mainstream AC in a major-market doesn’t go all-Christmas between Thanksgiving and the holiday itself. And yet, wall-to-wall holiday music was a radical gesture in the ’90s, first employed primarily on AM or by stations looking for an attention-getting format change stunt. So what do programmers remember about the early days of the format? With KESZ (K-EZ) Phoenix celebrating its “twentieth year of Christmas music,” we talked to a handful of programmers and managers, including former K-EZ GM and consensus pioneer Jerry Ryan about how Christmas formats became a tradition.

As with any oral history, memories are usually hazy and often contradictory. The gap between the all-holiday format as something quirky done by a handful of stations and a ratings juggernaut that became standard operating practice for the AC format was at least seven years. With more initial naysayers than proponents, there wasn’t a perceived need to document it for posterity. It is typical that my own memories of the chronology, garnered while covering the rise of all-Christmas as a trade journalist in 1992-95, do not match those of any of the broadcasters we spoke to, which I regard as my memory lapse, not theirs.

K-EZ is generally believed to be the longest-running FM AC station executing the format in its current Thanksgiving-(or-before)-to-Christmas-Day model. But the true “First Christmas Station” is murkier. K-EZ’s “twentieth Christmas” would date it back to 1992. But press reports in the Norfolk, Va., area as well as one consultant’s memory) suggest that it might date back to 1991 in that market, including a long stint on the former WXEZ (Star 94.1) Norfolk, Va. (UPDATE: See the comments below. A market veteran helps clarify the timeline, which dovetails more with what I remember, and would suggest that K-EZ’s “twentieth” claim includes now-sister stations.)

Until the ’90s, the “24 Hours Of Christmas” (or “36 Hours…”) could show up on stations in any format, including Top 40, that wanted to give the jocks the holiday off, but the changeover usually took place sometime on Christmas Eve. Christmas music didn’t stay on the air long enough to justify research, and since most holiday music broke format in some way, there was a lot less effort to separate the enduring from the barely endured.

Dan Vallie, Vallie, Richards, Donovan Consulting: If you go back to the old days, it was very common in the ’70s and ’80s that after Thanksgiving people would have a Christmas song an hour, then three weeks out a few more, then at two weeks before they would go up to 3-4 an hour, then Christmas Eve everybody would go all-Christmas and that would be it. The big question in those days was when do we start playing the Christmas song and what do we replace it with? Do we take out an oldie or a current? Did you start the religious-themed songs a week before, or did you wait until Christmas Eve?

I believe we were the first ones to go “all-Christmas” [as a one-day special] on the day after Thanksgiving. When we started recommending it to PDs and managers, there were no Arbitron ratings that day, so the risk was low if it didn’t work. We went for two or three years and I said, if that works, let’s do it all weekend long. And that was a big jump.

Jerry Ryan, former GM KESZ (and the just-retired GM of Univision/Chicago): I think we did it around 1991. There was an AM in the market that would play Christmas music. That’s how we first noticed it. And I noticed that they got a little bit of a spike. So they were actually first. But I would say of the major FMs, it was probably KEZ.

Marty Manning, longtime KESZ air personality: I remember that [gold-based AC] KTWC [Twice 103.5, now KLNZ] went Christmas music one year for a month and we did it for a week. After seeing their (relatively) huge bump in the fall, Jerry Ryan decided that we needed to go all the way—a month or so. I also remember [Adult Standards AM] KOY going all-Christmas for a period of time about the same time as our one week stint; I recall seeing a KOY Christmas music billboard. So I’m guessing that we did a week in 1995 and went all-Christmas for a month or more starting in 1996.

Kerry Wolfe, director of programming, Clear Channel/Milwaukee: WOKY-AM Milwaukee was the first station to go all-Christmas as far as I know. Mike Jorgenson’s Sundance Broadcasting was the owner and would do radical things with the format like going all “good news.” In 1989, I believe, we tried the 100% Christmas format and more times than not, WOKY would be No. 1 in December in all demos. When Mike bought the stations in Phoenix [including KOY], he took the stunt there as well.

Alan Burns, Alan Burns & Associates: I had only heard of one station doing it and it was [Norfolk, Va.-area WXEZ.] In the fall, they would show up with not a big number, but more of a number than they had during the rest of the year, and I remember asking what they did in the fall.

A press release for McVay Media, issued last year before Mike McVay became senior VP of programming for Cumulus Media, recalls it thusly: "McVay conjured up the idea while consulting with KESZ in 1993. While evaluating the fall ratings results, McVay noticed a small AM station showing ratings that he’d never noticed before. When McVay asked KESZ GM Jerry Ryan why this station was showing ratings, Ryan said the station [played] 100% Christmas music. McVay joked that maybe they should go 100% Christmas the next year. Ryan went through with it and KESZ rated No. 1 with 25-54-year-olds for the first time.

McVay (contacted directly): Sam Church was the PD, Jerry Ryan the GM, I was the consultant.

Ryan: It was definitely Alan Burns. McVay was there around 1986-88.

McVay: I consulted the station three times, twice under Jerry… I give Jerry full credit, but I was the consultant. [McVay also notes that he would go on to put all-Christmas on 65 Clear Channel stations in one year as the format spread.]

Manning: I think Mike McVay was consultant at the time, but Jerry would be the expert on that.

Jon Zellner, then PD of KSRC (Star 102) Kansas City, now Senior VP of Programming, Clear Channel: The first one was KSFI Salt Lake City. The second one was KESZ. We were the third one in the country to do it at Star 102 [now KCKC] in 1999.

Dain Craig, former PD KSFI Salt Lake City, now morning host Park City TV: KSFI was one, if not the first, to start an all-Christmas format way back in the ’80s. “The 100 Hours of Christmas” was a huge tradition way before I was lucky enough to take over the reins of the station in 1994. I expanded it a couple of years after I took over to the day after Thanksgiving. Clear Channel put an AC [KOSI] on the air and, of course, challenged the Christmas music position by starting earlier every year.

Ryan: We did it from Thanksgiving on. I can remember [consultant] Alan Burns and John Gehron both waving their arms at me saying you must be crazy. Alan said you’re going to blow up this radio station. I said I’m telling you it’s going to be massive.

Alan Burns, Alan Burns & Associates: Jerry Ryan brought it up and my first thought was ‘it’s 100 degrees here at Christmas time. Are people in the Christmas mood that much?" But we were doing a fair amount of work in Australia at the time and I thought, well, it’s summer there, but they’re into it… And after the first book with it, it was clearly genius.

Jim Taszarek, Radio-Info Sales columnist, former GM crosstown KTAR: I remember K-EZ going all Christmas and everybody thinking it was a dumb idea.

Ryan: It made the station a bit quirky, but that was kind of our goal. We were very entrepreneurial. We knew we weren’t afraid to be different. That made us very local and created a lot of emotional value to the radio station.

Zellner: [In Kansas City,] It goes back to Herndon Hasty, who was the market manager at the time. We really wanted a sure-fire way to beat [then AC rival] KUDL. Launching a new AC station is not easy… so we decided to take a chance and we launched Christmas music the day after Thanksgiving. We saw immediate results that first year. It wasn’t until the third or fourth year that KUDL decided it was the right move and went after us.

Ryan: The jocks were pretty good. I would say everybody was pretty supportive.

Zellner: My staff thought we were changing format. We had been [KYYS] KY102 which had become [Modern AC KOZN] 102.1 The Zone for all of 15 months and then we launched Star ten months prior. The sales department was convinced that we were changing format again.

Vallie: Most of the jocks didn’t want to, of course. A lot of people thought it was an unhip thing to do. Everybody in radio lives to be hip, except for the audience, which is living their normal lives.

Zellner: Listeners called and told us we were out of our mind. And any time you get complaints, you do second guess yourself. After a few days, I was like ‘do we really want to do this.’ We certainly doubted ourselves the first year.

Vallie: In early days, before stations knew what the response was going to be, we would get calls saying “We’re getting negatives! We’re getting negatives!” We’d say, just be calm, it’s going to work. And then the calls would turn into all positives and we’d get calls from stations saying this is awesome, I can’t believe the response we’re getting.

Burns: When we decided to do it, there was a battle between the people who wanted to play every holiday song and [those who wanted a tight list.] I’m pretty sure the first year, “everything” won out, and we played [Lou Monte’s] “Dominick The Donkey” and “Jingle Bells” by the Singing Dogs. The second year, we got it together, and sometime around then we had a 25-share with women 25-54. And that was with only two weeks between Thanksgiving and the end of the book.

Zellner: It was really tight that first year. It was less than 100 songs. There’s really only about 20 or so Christmas songs, but there’s obviously many different versions of them. The key is familiar Christmas titles by different artists and there were enough to make it a four week format back then. Now it seems like every artist has a Christmas album.

Vallie: One of the arguments against holiday music, which seemed legitimate at the time, that worried that it was just a ploy, and the advertising agents would buy around us because they’ll consider it a fake spike. I said, if you establish it, they will start buying in advance knowing that the numbers are going to be there. And, of course, now every year the advertising community knows that the numbers are going to be there.

Ryan: What really propelled the whole thing was when we started doing the [morning team] Beth McDonald & [the late] Bill [Austin] Christmas CD. We donated the profits to Arizona family charities. The Smooth Jazz stations were doing compilation CDs. We put them together for three years [with] Christmas music. Then Beth & Bill, who were both fantastic, started doing a live broadcast at the Biltmore Fashion Mall. We sold the CD for $10. That coupled with the Christmas music and the compilation CD just put it over the top

Zellner: The music itself is about 60-65% of what makes a holiday music station successful. It’s the whole package, the whole presentation.… We had the big Country Club Plaza lighting ceremony—we were able to get the “presents” of that and almost everything else holiday-related.

Craig: One of the things I started that really took off was to play local artists on the air next to the classics and contemporary songs. We would have those artists perform live every morning throughout December, then those performances would be added to the playlist AND we’d produce a CD every year that was sold at local outlets like Walmart, Target, and from our Website. The proceeds were all donated to a homeless shelter every year, and we would finish up with a two-day broadcast from its lobby raising money and interviewing the kids and families. It’s probably the thing I’m proudest of being involved with in radio.

Zellner: On Christmas Eve, we tied in with Channel 9 to do Santa sightings. The Internet was still new then; obviously, now there are Websites that track Santa. Back in the day, it was kind of cool that we had updates from meteorologist Brian Busby, who tracks Santa sightings. We had our morning show record “’Twas The Night Before Christmas” and played that as a power on Christmas eve. Little things are meaningful.

The first year they said, “Oh, they’re changing format.” The second year, they said it was just a fluke. The third year they tried to play some Christmas music and some AC music. The fourth year, they just tried to beat us to it. Kansas City was the first [holiday music] war, too.

Burns: I think Jerry Ryan deserves a lot of credit. He was the guy who pushed the idea and we said ‘okay.’ KESZ didn’t have any money. They had a good morning show and we had the music in shape, but no firepower, so it was tactically driven. We thought maybe this would work and it sure did.

Ryan: When we look back at the station, we stole a lot of ideas from [legendary AC] KVIL Dallas and [PD/morning man] Ron Chapman. But the Christmas music was certainly worth the calculated risk. Even though a lot of people told us we were going to blow ourselves up, we managed to create something.

Thanks to Julie Adam and Roy Laughlin for suggesting this story.