When to pull Christmas music

[Dave Allen]

We're all Christmas till midnight Christmas night then its back to normal, whatever that is here.

As a side note radio can make you hate Christmas. My wife and are the only ones on our street that don't decorate for Christmas. From the day after Thanksgiving till Christmas Eve, Dave is "Christmas Boy" with three or four remotes a week, charity events, etc. The last thing I want to think about when I go home is Christmas. My neighbor drives a truck for Coke. The other day he asked why we don't decorate. I asked him, "When you come home from driving your truck, do you want to load and unload more Coke?"

I think he got the point.

[Jay Nunley]

I hate Christmas at the cellular level until the minute I get to my parent's house on Christmas Eve. For about 24 hours I love Christmas the same way I loved it as a kid.

Dave's point about the Coke truck is something to take into account as radio guys. Many of us hate Christmas for many reasons (most of them to do with the business). Don't let it affect your programming.

[Clay JD Walker]

Nixed the all Christmas plan this year at my place...heavy on the hits...still played my strong records and powers. I let the AC do their all Christmas gimick...Research showed me the light on that one. 6 p.m. Christmas Eve to 7 p.m. Christmas night we were jockless...heavy on the Christmas, and special imaging around everything else made it sound neatly packaged.

I love Christmas...it's funny...I never took advantage of seeing my family as much as I could when I lived in Charleston...now that I'm 6 hours away, I'm like Jay...hate Christmas until you get down to it with the fam damnily. Personally, my beef comes from hearing constant sports and/or 'It's a Metro Christmas' the entire trip up and back across the great state of WV...however, I understand and appreciate why ya'll run that programming...gotta make money...

On the note of Christmas in WV...it was really cool to see former MU classmates on DTV, catch up with old radio buddies, and let my dog dig and shit in someone else's backyard besides mine. I believe this year I've had the most time off at Christmas than ever in my career...and it's so nice to take time to breathe, catch up, and realize why it is that I do what I do...it's been a very blessed year.

But I will say this...I've never been as excited to move my Christmas imaging and music back into the hold category as I was Monday morning...if I hear Christmas in Dixie one more time before Thanksgiving '09, someone's getting a bullet in his or her's head...'just sayin'

Jay...105 sounds the best it ever has...as a matter of fact, it seemed like all of the stations from Summersville up sound the best they ever have...

[jag]

I agree. By 5 PM or so, the presents are unwrapped, dinner is served, and people are generally sick of the whole mess and just want to return to some non-holiday normalcy.

"Non-holiday normalcy?" That, itself, is more than enough reason to continue playing Christmas music!

[RadioCriminal]

So we agreed we'd let you guy decide.Mark

So, like, what did you and PD do after this here think tank session?