It's November 1, so the snowflakes are already showing up on the dial. Buffalo's New 96.1 flipped to all Christmas music this morning and calls itself one of the first stations in the country to do it, and in Salt Lake City KLO-FM became the first station in North America to adopt the all-Christmas music format for the 2026 season. Plenty more will follow over the next few weeks.
If you program the AC that's flipping, you're set for the next two months. This column is for everyone else: the Top 40, Hot AC and Country PDs who are about to watch a chunk of their audience walk across the street for eight weeks.
You can't stop that from happening. You can control how much you lose and how fast you get it back in January.
Know What You're Up Against
The numbers on this haven't changed much in years. Nielsen has said that stations that own the all-Christmas format in their markets typically see a 72% spike in listening. It has also named who pays for that spike: the stations that go down are most often country, CHR and regional Mexican. In Nielsen's look at the 2018 season, AC's audience share increased 86% in just two months.
The appetite is still there. In the Holiday 2025 survey, 106.7 Lite FM WLTW led Inside Radio's top 10 with a 4.6 million cume, up 10.7% year-over-year.
So expect a dip. What you don't want is a dip that turns into a habit. Every P1 who forgets your station over the holidays is someone you have to win back in the Winter book.
Set Your Holiday Music Policy Now
Don't let this get decided by whoever builds the log the week of Thanksgiving. Make the call now and write it down.
- Pick a start date. For most CHRs, holiday titles before Thanksgiving week sound like they're chasing the AC. After that, a little seasonal flavor is fair game.
- Cap it. One holiday title per hour, or even every other hour, is enough to tell listeners you know what time of year it is. A few seasonal songs worked for at least one AC: in Holiday 2023, Atlanta's B98.5 WSB-FM was up 4.7 to 6.0 playing just a few Christmas songs per-hour.
- Keep the holiday songs on-format. Use pop-leaning holiday songs that fit your format. Bing Crosby belongs on the AC.
- Protect your power currents. When the AC is all-Christmas, your hits are the main reason people tune to you instead. Don't bury them to make room for holiday songs.
Make the Breaks Do the Work
A wall of Christmas music makes the AC sound pleasant, but every break on it sounds about the same. That's your opening. A Barrett Media piece on holiday-season talent coaching put it this way: when the log is all holiday music, "the on-mic breaks become the true heartbeat of the station." That applies just as much to stations that don't flip.
- Go hyper-local with the season. Parade routes, light displays, toy drives, school concerts and the traffic near the mall. Most of these happen on fixed dates, so they're easy to prep weeks in advance.
- Talk about the music. Year-end chart recaps and "biggest song of 2026" countdowns remind listeners why they picked your station in the first place.
- Keep the pace up. Short, tight breaks with energy are the best contrast to the slower feel of the all-Christmas station.
Bank Your Holiday Tracks the Right Way
Between Thanksgiving and New Year's, everyone wants time off, and a lot of shifts get tracked ahead. That's fine as long as the tracks don't sound old when they air. Here's the system I use.
- Separate dated breaks from undated ones. Breaks that mention a specific day or event get recorded close to air. Undated breaks (general holiday wishes, station stories, artist content) can be banked early.
- Set end dates on everything. Whether you're on Zetta, NexGen, WideOrbit, AudioVault or ENCO, put start and end dates on seasonal liners, promos and tracks. A "Happy Holidays" liner playing on January 3rd is the most common holiday mistake.
- Build a holiday-week template. Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day need different clocks and different tracks. Build them once and save them for next year.
- Track around the weather. Have a few weather-neutral backup breaks ready so a surprise ice storm doesn't leave you airing tracks about a sunny weekend.
- Listen back. Check at least one hour of every banked day before you leave town. You'll catch the bad segues and expired references.
Image the Contrast
Your imaging should show the difference without sounding grumpy about Christmas. Positioning like "all the hits, all season" tells listeners what you are without knocking what they also enjoy. Plenty of your audience will happily switch between you and the Christmas station all month. You want them coming back, and a liner that sneers at Christmas music makes them less likely to.
Make your January return liners now too. When the AC flips back after Christmas, you want promos already on the air saying the hits never stopped here.
Austin's Take
I've watched this happen every November for more than 20 years, and the Top 40s that hold up best never panic. They don't flip halfway, they don't turn into a holiday jukebox, and they don't hand the breaks to a computer for six weeks. They keep sounding like themselves, just with a holiday feel and more local content. The all-Christmas station will win December. Your goal is to make sure your listeners come back the minute it flips back. If you need help covering those holiday shifts, remote Top 40 voice tracking can give your staff time off without leaving your station sounding empty.
Image by niekverlaan from Pixabay
