Year-End 2005

[BrettVW]

I know it's early, but I was noticing the other day while looking ahead in my calendar that this is one of those funky years where Christmas falls on a Sunday - as will New Years Day.

I imagine AT20 will have its usual 2 week long Top 60 Countdown, with Part 1 airing Christmas weekend and Part 2 airing New Years Weekend.

However, with more and more Hot AC stations going commercial free all-Christmas on the 24th & 25th, will Part 1 of the show not air in many markets? Or - will Premiere have a deal where they are required to run the show has a 6 hour special on New Years weekend if they do not air Part 1 on Christmas weekend?

I assume AT10 will run Christmas programming on Christmas weekend and the one part year-end special on New Year's Weeekend with no problem. And I assume AT40 will run the Top 100 in two parts on Christmas and New Years weekends, but it wont make a difference because generally CHR/Pop stations do not run holiday music.

But what will be "the common practice" for AT20's year end this year? Will Part 1 be a rarity - airing only on those few stations that do not break from all-holiday programming? Or will Premiere make all affiliates run the entire show at some point?

I wouldn't mind a 6 hour marathon on New Years afternoon. But I doubt that would happen.

[Deleted]

I realize when I say this I am referring to the way things happened 11 years ago. But that year Christmas fell on Sunday and the local CHR station ran the Fox Kids Countdown at noon rather than 6am, and Casey's Top 40 Year End Special Part 1 at 2pm. I think a lot if not all stations playing Christmas music usually wind it up about noon, so it could be that the shows will run in the afternoon/evening on Sunday. As far as the Saturday shows, again, my experience was a lot of stations dont start Christmas music until Christmas Eve afternoon (I know, CC stations start it at Thanksgiving) so for those the shows still might air at their normal Saturday AM times.

[BrettVW]

Good points. I think there are few CC Hot AC stations that go all-Christmas in November - although there have been a few known to do so.

I know my Casey affiliate runs Christmas music 24/7 from 12am Christmas Eve until 12am on the 26th. This will be their 4th holiday season as a Rick Dees affiliate and 2nd with Casey, so it will be interesting to see what happens. I know they always run a marathon replay of the shows on New Years Eve night and New Years Day.

Should be interesting to see what happens. I could see WKDD not running the shows on Christmas Day, and then putting them on a loop from New Years Eve afternoon through Monday morning the 2nd - which would be fine with me.

[Radioman]

brettvw said:

But what will be "the common practice" for AT20's year end this year? Will Part 1 be a rarity - airing only on those few stations that do not break from all-holiday programming? Or will Premiere make all affiliates run the entire show at some point?

I wouldn't mind a 6 hour marathon on New Years afternoon. But I doubt that would happen.

Since the beginning of man kind it was always allowed to run and/or re-run one or two part yearend shows on new years eve, new years day or between the years.
This is a well known practice for all syndicated countdown shows on stations, who like to do so.
There is no special agreement needed for that; Other's there wouldn't be a need to produce a yearend show for holiday dates.

[BrettVW]

I realize the show is allowed to be rerun on New Years Eve and Day. But, my point is, with many of the affiliates not as excited to be running Casey as they were in the 70's and 80's - many of them running the shows because they have no choice - will they even bother with Part 1 of the year-end show if they are not running it on Christmas Eve or Day? It's not whether they have the option to run Parts 1 and 2 together on New Years Weekend...but if they don't run Part 1 on Christmas weekend - will they be required to run them both on New Years?

[Topay]

Perhaps AT20 will do Part One on New Year's Weekend and Part Two the following weekend, with stations having the option of running the whole thing as part of a New Years' Marathon. That way, when they get back to normal shows (3rd weekend of January), they can start right off using the R&R chart, instead of having to use a special Mediabase tally.

[Deleted]

good point but that is not how it is usually done. As the idera is to close out the previous year as close to New Years as they can.

I'll be 100% honest, I have only heard two stations ever run both halves of a Top 100 together on New Years Day or whatever. and they dont do that any longer. While I am sure they still can, they just dont.

[BrettVW]

Paul,

I agree with you. I am lucky to have a CC Hot AC (WKDD) that truly enjoys running both American Top 20 and Rick Dees Weekly Top 40 (Hot AC version), and they always run the shows as marathons on New Years Eve and Day. However, that can't be said for many affiliates who simply run Casey's show as filler during early or late time slots because they have to run the shows. WKDD has a great PD (Keith Kennedy) that cares about the shows and a great person that loads the shows into Prophet each week with care to make sure everything is right (Rob Mackenzie).

[CaseyFan101]

Hey Fans,
Remember back in 95 at Westwood 1, they didn't do a two part year end on the Hot AC - There was a top hits of the 90s So Far Special instead. My money's on history repeating itself.
As for airing it, give the 00s retrospective a broadcast window of Dec 23-Jan 2 and everybody will be happy !

[Hervard]

caseyfan101 said:

Hey Fans,
Remember back in 95 at Westwood 1, they didn't do a two part year end on the Hot AC - There was a top hits of the 90s So Far Special instead.

Speaking of which, does anyone happen to have that show (or at least a list of it)? The station I listened to Casey's Hot 20 on dropped the show the week before and I totally missed out on that one.

[BrettVW]

I got word from the affiliate up here at college as to their plans for the Year End show.

They will not be running any Casey Kasem programming on Christmas weekend, and will be running wall to wall Christmas music from Friday night Dec. 23 through midnight Monday the 26th.

Casey's Year-End countdown will air in its entirety on New Years Day from 6am-Noon and again from 6pm-Midnight. The show airs 9am-Noon and 9pm-Midnight normally on Sunday, so this is basically just an extension of that.

No word on WKDD or Mix 106.5 back home (where I will be over the holiday weekends anyway), although I imagine many stations will do something similar to this. With the holidays over a weekend, I have a feeling we may see many stations opt out of running Casey on Christmas weekend and opt to run the show as an all-day event on New Years Day, which is A-OK in my book.

[Deleted]

I wish for situations like this, premiere FORCED their affiliates to run the show as you said. In fact, personally I would like to see a return of the full countdown in 1 week format of the old AT40 days. Perhaps let AT20 stations run a Christmas show of some kind Christmas weekend since it is pretty much a throw away week radio show wise anyway.

[BrettVW]

WKDD has always done this as well. Even when the holidays are mid-week, they will run the Year End shows in full on New Years Eve and Day in addition to their regularly scheduled weekend airing. I assume they will continue the tradition this year.

[Radioman]

paul said:

I wish for situations like this, premiere FORCED their affiliates to run the show as you said. In fact, personally I would like to see a return of the full countdown in 1 week format of the old AT40 days. Perhaps let AT20 stations run a Christmas show of some kind Christmas weekend since it is pretty much a throw away week radio show wise anyway.

I believe the day when affiliates will be FORCED to do this or that with the show will be the last day they sold that programme to these stations ......
at least for the non Clear Channel stations that is.
Thank god their is a large number of non CC outlets with Casey's programmes.

[Deleted]

I meant forced all CC owned stations...sorry.