Christmas Music

[dollarbills]

Anyone here have a station that has played Christmas Music starting the day after Thanksgiving and go thru Christmas day?  What kind of response did you receive from the local businesses?  How did you sell it?

[Braswell]

> Anyone here have a station that has played Christmas Music
> starting the day after Thanksgiving and go thru Christmas
> day?  What kind of response did you receive from the local
> businesses?  How did you sell it?


I did this in 1997, and everybody thought I was nuts. We had an AM, which had simulcasted the FM for a number of years, which essentially meant it had zero listeners.

The plan was to kick off a, locally produced & home grown adult pop standards format, as our "Christmas Gift to Middle Georga". It hit me that a month of Christmas favorites was the perfect transition.

I had just hired and trained three new salespeople, and so I put together a very "economical" package, and turned 'em loose on the phones, following up in person, if needed.

These "newbies", not knowing that it couldn't be done, sold nearly $12,000.00 on an AM station in a micro-market. It was split-billed...50% December/50% January, and 98% was collected by mid-March.

The station continued the annual programming through the 2002 season, and then abandoned it. Nobody ever made any attempt to try to sell it again.

It's all in your attitude and perspective.

______________
Jay Braswell - Moderator
Atlanta/North Florida/South Carolina/Georgia Boards

[Tim]

> Anyone here have a station that has played Christmas Music
> starting the day after Thanksgiving and go thru Christmas
> day?  What kind of response did you receive from the local
> businesses?  How did you sell it?>


Our AM (adult standards/soft oldies) has run all-Christmas music in December for about 10 years. We're in a market of about half-a-million metro. I myself average $10,000 to $20,000 in *additional* billing every Christmas just because we're all-holiday music...and, to be truthful....I haven't even worked it that hard...I really need to grow it a lot bigger....the advertiser interest is really there...especially with local-direct businesses.

And, the $10,000-20,000 is just me...one salesman on a 10 person sales staff. I'd guess we do about $50,000-75,000 in additional billing simply because we do all-holiday music.

We run all our usual full-service features...just whenever there's music, it's holiday music from Thanksgiving to 6pm Christmas day.

We sell 3 basic packages...$3,000....2,000, and 1,000. It's a 6am-12mt. Monday-Sunday rate...with about a 20% discount over usual rates. Plus, we bonus about 10 no-charge overnight spots per week per client and run about 30 promos a week with 4 sponsors per promo plugged. It's a nice package.

Hope that helps.