Today FM Megathread Mod warning post #1 / #1401

Looks like they abandoned them at midnight. Quite a dramatic turnaround, most other stations still play one or two an hour for today (which I'm fine with), before they're dropped entirely tomorrow.

Appreciate I'm talking about it now that its over, but I thought the decision to go all-in on Christmas songs was an odd one, especially since they stuck to just the well-known ones. Dedicated Christmas stations mix in some obscure or less well-known Christmas songs, but TodayFM just played the usual suspects, i.e., Slade, Band Aid, Spice Girls, etc., so there was never more than three hours before a song would be repeated. That just gets boring.

Slightly off-topic (as it applies to nearly every station), but when did it become acceptable to play Christmas songs from early November? I don't want to sound old by saying "back in my day", but when I was younger (and I'm talking the late 80s/early 90s), you wouldn't hear a Christmas song on the radio until 8 December. They moved up to 1 December in the late 90s, and even up to the early 2010s, it would be rare to hear one in late November. I remember back in 2011, I was living in London and had Heart on one morning (no idea why, since Heart is terrible.) It was the last Friday in November and the breakfast DJs were having a dilemma over whether to play a Christmas song or not, since they thought it was still too early. In recent years, it seems to be acceptable to play them from 1 November. One satellite music channel switches to a Christmas playlist in early October I think.

I'm also in favour of a gentle phase-out, so it was quite a shock to turn on TodayFM at 1am this morning to find they back to their regular playlist with no Christmas music at all. Flicking around other stations, they seem to be going the two an hour route, which is fine. They'll probably be gone tomorrow though. With the exception of MTV Xmas, the satellite music channels have abandoned them today too. MTV Xmas reverts to its 90s playlist tomorrow.

Really? Tomorrow? MTV has really died out...

Someone in Bauer HQ in Germany I'd imagine, as already mentioned, they have been doing this on radio stations equivalent to Today FM in other countries for years. Mix Megapol in Sweden for example goes 100% Christmas on November 26 and is 100% "Christmasless" by December 26th

This is one Americanism I don't want to see coming over here. There are good reasons why the US gets over Christmas so quickly. They have Thanksgiving, a bigger holiday for them, just a month earlier, and they don't get a bank holiday on the 26th. It's completely different here, so there's no need to remove all traces of Christmas by the 26th.

I wonder how far away we are from some Irish influencer clowns celebrating Thanksgiving here.

Yes, it's back to being MTV 90s this morning.