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Notes -
A couple of weeks ago, there was a discussion on the relative popularity of religious vs. secular Christmas songs on the radio. Every time I’ve been in the car since then, I’ve listened exclusively to two local radio stations that played nothing but Christmas music. One station switched back to its regular cycle of music the day after Christmas, and the other switched back today. Here were the results:
Out of 539 songs, just under a quarter were religious in nature, including instrumental-only recordings of religious songs, such as Mannheim Steamroller’s versions. Close to a fifth of the religious songs on one channel were Gospel versions of traditional Christmas carols. This surprised me, as I don’t think I’ve ever heard a single Gospel Christmas recording on the radio before, let alone so many. I didn’t time the songs and so can’t give an exact number, but I’d estimate that each Gospel song was two or two-and-a-half times as long as anything else.
Stores were a different matter. I didn’t hear any religious songs in any store I went to. I also didn’t hear any traditional recordings of secular songs either, just a bunch of fairly crap modern recordings of both traditional and new music.
What this means for the War on Christmas, I don’t know. I was a bit surprised at the low number of religious songs on the radio, but not completely shocked. I also imagine the numbers are probably different in other parts of the country, with the coasts presumably having the most secular music and the south having the most religious music.
Anyway, those are the numbers for one city in the Midwest, for what it’s worth.
I wonder how Utah would score on that scale.
I assume the station with the gospel versions was a black station?
In recent years, in stores and malls I've heard a lot of repetitions of "Everybody's Waiting for the Man with the Bag", which sounds like a rejected song from the 1971 Willy Wonka movie.
It was not a black station, which is why it surprised me so much. There is an actual Gospel station in town, which I assume also had Gospel Christmas music.
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I would guess unless you were listening to a Christian station which felt like about 2:1 or 3:1 in favor of religious carols, it would be pretty similar in Utah (Clear channel/iHeartRadio runs an enormous proportion of big radio stations).
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