This from yesterdays R&R:

-----------------KOIT Beats KGO In S.F. Holiday PPM-----------------

By Julie Gidlow

After a 30-year reign, Citadel news/talk KGO/San Francisco has been surpassed as the No. 1 station in the market by Entercom AC KOIT in the Holiday 2008 PPM results released by Arbitron on Wednesday (Jan. 28). KOIT, which went all-Christmas from Nov. 21-Dec. 25, 2008, rose from a 6.1 in December 2008 to an 8.3 6+, while KGO slipped 6.1-5.4. The Holiday 2008 period covers Dec. 11, 2008 through Jan. 7, 2009.

"Of course, there's a reason it's called the holiday book," says KGO GM Mickey Luckoff, referring to the fact that Arbitron created this 13th book in PPM to handle the spike in ratings AC stations playing holiday music get each year. "Give credit to Arbitron for realizing it's an aberration and doing a holiday book."

KOIT PD Bill Conway tells R&R, "I haven't seen any champagne corks flying around, but it's certainly a happy day! Even my ratings books don't go back far enough to see what the last station to beat KGO was." (R&R ratings guru Hurricane Heeran says it was KFRC during its top 40 heyday.)

Additional reporting by Keith Berman and Mike Stern

As a KGO fan, I must ask: Is today's reality so harsh and painful to a lot of people that they would pick the escape of Christmas music on KOIT over the issues-oriented programs of KGO?

"Arbitron created this 13th book in PPM to handle the spike in ratings AC stations playing holiday music get each year"

I this the first year this measurement has been made in SF?

It is the first year ARB has released a "Christmas" ratings. And it's the first year SF has had the PPM. In the past, you could use Arbitron software to isolate the "all Christmas music" time period into a separate ratings report, but it wasn't an official Arbitron time period. This is its first year as Arbitron's official 5th book. (The Neil Aspinall book).

This doesn't mean a thing. KGO will still get all the radio buys in San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose.

what does Neil Aspenall have to do with SFradio ratings?isn't he the present manger of the Beatles,and their longtime friend???

Now that the PPM has uncovered the success of stations programming all Christmas music for the holiday season, the next question is, what happens if two stations try it? Does the part of the audience that likes All-Christmas have any loyalty to the first station that has done it in a previous year? Or does the audience gain have anything to do with the cume demos on either station during their regular programming? Will the addition of a second station burnout the Christmas music causing both of them to lose out? We'll just have to wait another 10 months to find out.

I'm with Radiohead... doesn't mean a thing.

But it's an interesting social phenomenon. Maybe the lousy economy, job market and general dark news have people unwilling to face reality radio for a while. "If the talk is all bad news, let's listen to Jingle Bells tonight".

KGO has a fierce & loyal listenership that's usually associated with the old AM flamethrowers of the midwest... and that's unusual for a west coast station. I wouldn't want to count her down and out just yet.

I agree that it is a short term blip, but if you look around the country, it happened in a lot of places two years running now. I predict that KGO will regain it's lead, but the sales guys at KOIT will be on the street from midyear on taking advantage of it.

I think KGO has the best talent of any radio station in the U.S.

It means that when next year's Christmas time buys come up, KOIT will be sold out and expensive. It means that for the rest of the year, other stations will point this out by downplaying the book in respect to the other 4 12-week books.

And the neil aspinall comment was a riff on fifth beatle - fifth book.... in each case, not really connected to the other four except in the mind of the 5th. Too obscure?

Hal (and anyone else) - Here in Phoenix, our "Christmas stations" in the past have been 99.9 KE(S)Z and 1230 KOY. This past Yuletide, CBS's KOOL-FM loaded their sleigh and went all Christmas over a week BEFORE Thanksgiving, after doing two all-Christmas weekends in a row. The jingle bells continued 'til several days AFTER Christmas, when they returned to their regular format, sans personalities, off until the New Year.

Granted, I'm not a typical listener, but I HAD a lot of respect for KOOL until they pulled this. KOOL-FM is one of the last Phoenix stations to have heavy personalities and a decent presence in the community. All of that was basically tossed aside for nearly two months of holiday programming. Talk about blowing your image...I spent much more time with classic rock KSLX, and I *still* do today because of the time I spent getting to know them!

(If I hear Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmas Time" before about 2015 then I'm liable to heave my radio like a brick through a window...)

Oh, yes...CBS exercised their budget ax just before this happened, and dumped their longtime afternoon drive personality, along with a morning show member and afternoon traffic reporter...

To be fair, Sandusky's KSLX lost a couple of longtime air people due to the budget ax, too...just after CBS hit their "eject" button.

Talk about upsetting old habits, losing friends on the radio, and the economy...This is a nasty time!!

Will it pay off in better revenues? Ratings? I'm not so sure...KOOL's end-of-year ratings took a bath...

And the mystery that is PPM is looming around the corner...

The irony--of using Christmas music as a tool to keep folks off the payroll--is pretty sad. I can almost hear "Christmas-Bah Humbug!" reverberating through the halls of the Phoenix CBS offices.

Mark,

You can add "Holly Jolly Christmas," and "Step into Christmas" to that list. Here in San Antonio the two all-Christmas stations did not take their people off the air. One of them has Delilah on at night and I guess she just did breaks that they downloaded and ran locally.

A few years ago I was given the Jim Shulke Christmas music list for his format. It wasn't wall-to-wall, but intended to be integrated with his Beautiful Music format, and then played on a continuous basis on Christmas Eve and Christmas day. It is a great traditional list and I've used it as a basis for what we do on Christmas Eve and Christmas day when we send everyone home and the SS32 does the holiday. This year I actually removed some of the high-repetition stuff that others were playing, even though it is popular. It had been burned out by the time Christmas arrived.

Alfredo_t - Please do not let me mislead you...When our KOOL-FM went back to regular format, they billboarded the jockless stage (Christmas Eve to the Monday after New Year's Day) as "...we're taking the holidays off, but we'll be back Monday." So far as I know, that was NOT a budget issue. Still, I thought it was a stupid move for a station that's been heavy on personality.

Hal - The Schulke list, eh? Next year, if your station is streaming, let me know and I'll be sure to listen in! I'd be very curious to hear it...

My holiday tastes are a bit weird anyway...Traditional country and bluegrass/mountain music blended with Windham Hill-Narada stuff, and traditional favorites. I guess that's what you get when Country meets Easy Listening. I'll still tolerate Holly Jolly Christmas, but only Burl Ives' version with an egg nog chaser...

Hear, Hear! Blue Oyster Cult's version of "A Holly Jolly Christmas" also just doesn't hit the mark.

I am glad to hear that my assumption that the KOOL staff was laid off was wrong.

Mark,

Yipes! Even though we're a Country station and have a category we call "Legends," which are the biggest Classic Country hits, I don't think we'll venture into the bluegrass/mountain music on our Christmas list. The Shulke stuff is VERY traditional...Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra...Carpenters...Ray Conniff singers, and many almost unknown artists and groups that just did very pretty Christmas songs. I've added some more modern stuff, but my little town is very conservative.

One thing we have done is to build a library of popular hot country singers doing traditional Christmas songs. Their styles and instrumentation fits right into our regular format, and we play three of them an hour beginning at Thanksgiving. In that case I was more interested in the sound of the station instead of trying to play what was the hottest testing Christmas songs, although most of them were included. Egg Nog is good and can be combined with a few adult beverages to warm up cold Christmas nights.