Posted by chicagomedia.org on November 13, 2008 at 22:46:25:
WLIT-FM's holiday blitz set to begin Friday
Get ready for the 41 days of Christmas.
Emboldened by a forecast of snow in the area, Clear Channel's WLIT-FM 93.9 has decided to launch its annual holiday music blitz Friday morning at 8:30, a station spokeswoman said Thursday.
The timing of Lite FM's switch to all-holiday music in the run-up to Christmas is annually a source of considerable speculation and anticipation and kicked off this year with the posting of a "Holiday Lite" countdown clock on the station's Web site on Nov. 1.
This year's clock initially indicated the switch would occur Nov. 21, but it has been notoriously unreliable.
The 2007 "Holiday Lite" countdown clock appeared online in late September last year, also indicating a mid-November launch of the annual Christmas music stunt. But the station actually started decking the halls on Nov. 2 because it was jockeying with CBS Radio, which was flipping WCKG-FM into WCFS-FM 105.9, a Lite FM challenger.
WLIT was rewarded with a whopping 1.6 million listeners during December, nearly triple its cumulative weekly audience, according to Arbitron. In 2006, it also launched its "Holiday Lite" programming on Nov. 2 at the first local sign of snow and netted a reported 1.4 million listeners.
Whether Arbitron's switch to Portable People Meters from diaries will prove nice or naughty to Lite FM's holiday ratings remains to be seen.
(Phil Rosenthal, Chicago Tribune)