I never lived there, but I do have holiday memories of Albany, N.Y. One was seeing Home Alone when it was brand-new in 1990 in a theater in suburban Colonie. There was also dinner that night at a nearby restaurant with an appropriately seasonal name, The Cranberry Bog.
The other was hearing Albany CHR radio over Christmas 1984 from nearby Great Barrington, Mass. Both “Last Christmas” by Wham! and “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” by Band-Aid were new and phenomenal. Punching between WFLY and WGFM, those are the two songs I most associate with the trip, even at a big moment for hit music.
So, it’s appropriate, for me anyway, that Albany/Schenectady/Troy is kicking off the Christmas-music season with three stations. On Halloween, Townsquare’s WPBZ (Zoey 103.9) flipped to holiday music for the first time as a Hot AC. By noon the next day, iHeart’s Classic Hits WTRY and Pamal’s WYJB (B95.5) had both switched. The Cranberry Bog has been gone for years, but the Capital Region is radio’s most festive market.
Last year, WYJB led the market in December with a 7.1 share; the previous year it had a 7.5, its highest monthly ever. WTRY had a 3.3 share. WPBZ had done holiday music in 2023 as Soft AC The Breeze before sitting the next two years out.
Each year, Ross on Radio kicks off its holiday-radio coverage with the first stations to switch, usually as an opportunity to hear the Audacy and iHeart mixes for the year. This year, there was the opportunity for an entire “Fresh Listen” in one market, comparing the three stations at 1 p.m., November 2.
You expect a certain amount of overlap in a three-way battle in any format. There were only four songs I heard more than once: Brenda Lee, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”; Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s “Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24”; Jose Feliciano’s Feliz Navidad”; and, less obviously, the Bing Crosby version of “Frosty the Snowman.” (The first three were among the Christmas format’s top 20 most-played songs last year.)
I heard “Careless Whisper” only once. I didn’t hear “Do They Know It’s Christmas.”
The similarities were in positioning. B95.5 was “The Capital Region’s Christmas Music Station.” WTRY was “The Capital Region’s Official Christmas Station.” Zoey was both “The Capital Region’s Christmas Music Station” and “The Official Christmas Station.”
On its first full weekday, B95.5 was the most fleshed-out presentationally, with sweepers, jingles, and middayer Jackie. The other two stations were both unhosted when I heard them, and both relied on sweepers only. B95.5 and Zoey had a few cold segues. WTRY did not.
In recent years, iHeart has been the holiday playlist most invested in ’40s/’50s/’60s MOR. In the 1 p.m. hour, WTRY’s average year was 1973. Using the Mediabase all-format holiday-music chart from 2025, the average position of its songs was No. 88, in part by playing the 1949 Frank Sinatra version of “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” instead of the more-common Cyndi Lauper duet. WTRY played 16 songs, as well as one in its streaming stopset.
In keeping with iHeart’s “Guaranteed Human” positioning, one of WTRY’s liners declares, “AI doesn’t get glitter everywhere” like they do. WTRY was also the only station with holiday contesting in the hour monitored, as part of iHeart’s “Christmas Cash” contest.
Here’s WTRY at 1 p.m.:
- Jose Feliciano, “Feliz Navidad”
- Willie Nelson, “Frosty the Snowman”
- Carpenters, “Carol of the Bells”
- Trans-Siberian Orchestra, “Christmas Canon”
- Vince Guaraldi, “O Tannenbaum”
- Barbra Streisand, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”
- Nat King Cole, “Deck the Halls”
- Lady A, “A Holly Jolly Christmas”
- Brenda Lee, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”
- Perry Como, “Twelve Days of Christmas”
- Michael Bublé, “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow”
- Burl Ives, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”
- Wham! “Last Christmas”
- John Lennon, “Happy Xmas/War Is Over”
- Ray Conniff, “Here Comes Santa Claus”
- Frank Sinatra, “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town (1948)”
B95.5’s average year of 1976 was slightly newer. It had the highest average chart number (49) among the 16 songs played. Here’s B95.5 at 1 p.m.:
- Martina McBride, “Do You Hear What I Hear”
- Bobby Helms, “Jingle Bell Rock”
- Backstreet Boys, “Last Christmas”
- Gene Autry, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”
- Amy Grant, “Sleigh Ride”
- Vince Guaraldi, “Linus and Lucy”
- Ray Conniff, “Twelve Days of Christmas”
- Mariah Carey, “All I Want for Christmas is You”
- Brenda Lee, “Jingle Bell Rock”
- Bing Crosby, “Frosty the Snowman”
- Trans-Siberian Orchestra, “Christmas Eve/Sarajevo/12/24”
- Ronettes, “Sleigh Ride”
- Kelly Clarkson, “Underneath the Tree”
- Nat King Cole, “The Christmas Song”
- Perry Como, “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas”
- Carpenters, “Home for the Holidays”
Zoey’s playlist was both the broadest and the newest (that still being 1982 in this case). Its average peak was No. 162, in part due to some religious-themed Christmas carols that weren’t on the other two stations. It was the only one of the three stations that was commercial-free in this hour, meaning that it had 18 songs in the hour. Here’s 1 p.m.:
- Andy Williams, “Happy Holiday/The Holiday Season”
- Elmo & Patsy, “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer”
- Percy Faith & Orchestra, “Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly”
- Ariana Grande, “Santa Tell Me”
- Carnie & Wendy Wilson, “Hey Santa”
- Jose Feliciano, “Feliz Navidad”
- Kelly Clarkson, “O Holy Night”
- Gene Autry, “Here Comes Santa Claus”
- Michael Bublé, “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”
- Stevie Wonder, “What Christmas Means to Me”
- Carpenters, “Sleigh Ride”
- Trans-Siberian Orchestra, “Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24”
- Bing Crosby, “Frosty the Snowman”
- John Legend, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”
- Frank Sinatra & Cyndi Lauper, “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”
- Brenda Lee, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”
- Michael Bolton, “White Christmas”
- Andy Williams, “The First Noel”
