I know what you’re thinking.
“Rob, it’s still August. Why the hell are you writing about Christmas formats now?”
We live in norm-shattering times. All the rules are out the window. Decorum is a thing of the past. Standards and laws mean nothing. Men don’t wear hats anymore.
And calendars, too, have become meaningless.
Actually, it’s because KKGO-HD3 in Los Angeles flipped to all-Christmas on Friday, August 21.
August!
That’s the earliest seasonal flip I can think of.
All-Christmas used to be something of a radio stunt. The earliest examples appear to have come out of Phoenix.
Phoenix’s KMEO reportedly began running Christmas music from Thanksgiving through Christmas in 1989. KOY continued the idea, and KESZ adopted it in 1996 after watching listeners flock to KOY during the holidays. KESZ’s ratings success caught the attention of its eventual owner, Clear Channel.
Country station WWYZ in Connecticut is often cited as the first station outside Phoenix to make a full seasonal switch, in 1998. Clear Channel tested the idea in more markets in 2000, including WMGF in Orlando.
When I worked at WJRR in the early ’90s, I could see the back of the WMGF DJ’s head through my studio window.
The tipping point came at KOST in Los Angeles at noon on November 20, 2001.
Well, more accurately, it came when the ratings showed what a huge hit the move had been.
And once again, I was right down the hall from radio greatness. I was working at KBIG at the time.
Under Jhani Kaye, KOST went all-Christmas earlier than originally planned. The post-9/11 desire for something comforting and familiar was part of the reasoning. But this was also a proven ratings strategy: Clear Channel switched about 75 stations that year.
KOST didn’t invent the all-Christmas format. What KOST did was prove that it could become a major annual event—and a massive ratings winner—in one of the country’s largest radio markets.
From the 2000s onward, the all-Christmas stunt and the all-Christmas seasonal format became two different things.
AC stations increasingly used Christmas music for a genuine November-and-December ratings run, chasing the enormous numbers KOST and other stations were producing during the holidays.
Other stations used Christmas music as a short bridge before changing formats. One especially early stunt came from CHAM in Hamilton, Ontario, which began playing Christmas music on August 29, 2008, then flipped to talk four days later. CFWD in Saskatoon even used Christmas music during a soft launch in April 2008.
Those were stunts. Nobody really believed Santa had a hankering for Christmas cookies in April.
Los Angeles, meanwhile, became competitive Christmas territory. KTWV challenged KOST in 2011. KKGO began turning its main country signal into “Your Christmas Destination” in 2016. In 2024, KKGO-HD2’s K-Mozart service—and its 98.3 FM translator—went Christmas on October 25 while the main KKGO signal remained country.
And now KKGO-HD3 has switched before Labor Day.
The new service is called “America’s Christmas Station,” and Mount Wilson management says it intends to keep playing nothing but Christmas music through the beginning of 2027.
That makes this something more than a four-day stunt. It may be the earliest start to a genuine Christmas-season run by an American terrestrial radio service.
And here I was, getting ready to grouse about Halloween stores and decorations popping up while it’s still summer.