To me, this is the worst 48 hours for radio in the entire year. If you’re not into Christmas, there’s not much to hear anywhere on the dial. One of the things I learned very early from my first PD was the absolute imperative of consistency. When people turn on your station expecting something, it should be there, whether they tune in at 4 PM or 4 AM.
 
But for some reason, all that goes out the window on Dec. 24th and Dec. 25th. And as a major consumer of the medium, it makes this time period almost unlistenable.
 
And so, because I essentially have no life, I decided to take a few trips up and down the dial to see who was doing what. What I found was that far too many stations had abandoned their core formats and turned it all over to Xmas. I won’t regurgitate the entire list here, but I monitored every local AM & FM station in the area at midnight and again at 9 AM, to hear their programming. It was surprising to me some of those that went all Yule, all the time.
 
Jazz-FM, for instance, was playing Christmas music. So was 94.9 The Rock from Oshawa, hardly what their normally harder rock audience might be expecting. How does Classical 96.3 justify throwing out its longhair music and going all holiday songs? Or CHUM-FM of all places?
 
Indie 88.1, The Move 95.3, HTZ FM 97.7, Virgin 99.9, CFNY 102.1, CFPT aka ELMNT 106.5 and Q107 carried on as usual. All the other FMs were all Christmas.
 
Over on the AM side, things were even stranger, considering that band is mostly talk. While 680 News kept it up all night, despite a lack of real stories, I noticed that on Xmas Eve, CKGL, 570 News, was airing Christmas programming (it was back to normal in the morning.).
 
All the sports stations stayed with their format, but most of the talkers were gone, including CKTB and CFMJ, which offered some tired but classic old time radio shows, CFRB, supposedly Canada's top talk station, played nothing but Christmas music all night and day. (Did they actually air the live Coast to Coast AM? I was sleeping by that time and didn’t hear it. But I doubt it.)

In fact, in an irony that can’t be lost on anyone, only CKNT, Sauga 960, kept airing regular talk shows, although I suspect they were all rerolls. Almost everyone else on AM had Yule as the rule.
 
Thank God for Funny 820, which outside of airing a brief “Radio Humber Xmas Special,” stayed true to the laughs and was able to "stand-up" to the holiday. As a loather of the same festive music over and over and over on every station, it was my go-to spot on Dec. 24 and 25th, just as it was last year.
 
Which brings up a final question or two. I know Christmas is a big deal and a lot of people celebrate it. Which is great. But why does almost every radio outlet in this market feel like they have to go hog wild on the holiday, or that only their station must air nothing but the same tired Christmas crap over and over and over because obviously no one else on the dial would think of such a thing?
 
The other point to be made is that Toronto is acknowledged around the world as perhaps the most multicultural city on the planet. That means a large and growing part of our population, including Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and even atheists, don’t celebrate Christmas at all. And frankly, neither do some Christians. Wouldn’t it make sense to program to some of them during that 48 hour gap?   
 
It always amazes me how easily stations abandon their stated programming missions when Dec. 25th rolls around. I’m honestly not sure what they should be airing during the dullest day of the year, but shouldn’t they at least make an attempt to stay in format?
 
That’s my Christmas wish. Maybe next year, it will come true.