For the first time in a few years Los Angeles has a pair of stations going All-Christmas as Mount Wilson FM Broadcasters Country “Go Country 105” KKGO has joined iHeartMedia AC 103.5 KOST in the holiday format.
KKGO is promoting the holiday flip as featuring the usual mix of holiday standards from artists such as Bing Crosby, LeRoy Anderson, Micahel Bublé and Mariah Carey. The current Country format will remain available online and the station is emphasizing that it will return on December 26.
Los Angeles last had a pair of Christmas stations when CBS’ “94.7 The Wave” KTWV took on KOST in 2011 and 2012. KOST’s heritage in the format (this is its fifteenth year going All-Christmas) led to it being not much of a battle as KOST generated a 10.2 share in the Holiday 2012 book to KTWV’s 4.0.
KKGO held a 2.7 share in the October 2016 Nielsen Audio ratings.
Joseph_Gallant 
Eric Jon Magnuson 
only1moore 
Mark W. 
This is a surprise.
It might have worked if KKGO decided to do an all-Christmas format consisting entirely of Christmas songs in the Country genre (and I am surprised that no one’s tried it).
When Kansas City’s KFKF has gone all-Christmas, it’s tried to stay at least largely Country. The difference there is that the station only started doing so when other local outlets stopped going all-Christmas.
See, e.g., http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/music-news-reviews/article4139783.html.
Well, at least Mount Wilson is still committed to keeping KKGO’s Country format. But in terns of who’ll come out on top of this Holiday battle, I give the edge to KOST.
When people tune to 105.1 – they want Country music. Period. This move will not effect KOST in the least, and it will have the added disadvantage of ticking off KKGO’s P1 listeners.
Almost no reputable station has tried an all-country Christmas music format because there is a dearth of air-worthy material. 93.1 in Detroit did it when they went Country a few years back. It was a disaster, and the ratings reflected that fact (a 1.1 or 1.2 in ages 6+, as I recall). It was a parade of stiffs.
It looks like Pittsburgh’s WDSY (Y108) went all-Country Christmas over the weekend–and apparently did something similar last year (although maybe for only a couple weeks). Interestingly, this year, it may be the third all-Christmas (non-HD subchannel) station in the market.