Chicago wlit

Lance Venta, publisher of RadioInsight. Sean Ross, who has been tracking holiday music preferences for 15 years with Edison Research and publishes the Ross On Radio newsletter, says:. Stations that might have changed on Nov. Beyond the national mood, some adult contemporary stations have less to lose by switching early this year. Lite FM has done relatively well this year, and in general since it switched back to soft adult contemporary, although it was off in the last few months. Other similar adult contemporary stations that were usually reliable ratings winners have been down because of the disruption in at-work listening.

In general, mainstream adult contemporary stations have been somewhat off. MRC Data , formerly known as Nielsen Music, tracks the number of plays Christmas songs have on radio and on-demand streaming services. It also gathers the start and end dates for Christmas music on hundreds of radio stations in the United States and Canada.

More than half the list can be called holiday classics — songs often recorded decades ago. Ross credits music testing and family traditions for the consistent play of these classic songs. Louis home:. Program directors know listeners want to hear versions of holiday carols that they know best, which could explain why so many songs released in the 20th century continue to be popular this time of year — and have even outlived the artists who performed them.

Alas, the data is flawed. No loud disc jockeys, Eric Clapton guitar riffs or blue jokes. Chris Campmeier, who oversees the format for Unistar, one of the four major radio networks, says Streisand, Manilow and Neil Diamond remain his programming ''core,'' though he finally bit the bullet by dropping dated recordings of ''Feelings. One assumes they know that George Bush, not Ronald Reagan, is president.

But it would be wrong for the outsider to view all soft AC as the same. The most recent ratings period showed WKQX in the lead among those five with a 3. WFYR has a younger-skewing audience, runs jingles and allows jocks to talk over the start or end of songs in a way that is discouraged at conservative WLIT. Too up-tempo. Bonneville, based in suburban Northbrook and the premier supplier of music for easy-listening stations, has EZ clients, but he has seen 22 others split for the soft AC format.

Opsitnik bristles, asserting that the initial rationale was wayward and that 13 of 18 stations that switched last year lost 1 to 2 audience share points in the to age group, as well as 2 to 5 share points among those 35 to