WBEB - Philadelphia's Christmas Station

Philadelphia's Christmas Station

In 2002, competing Adult Contemporary station WSNI (Sunny 104.5) began programming an all-Christmas music format as early as the first weekend in November. In previous years, B101 had gone all-Christmas for 36 hours—from noon Christmas Eve to midnight on December 25—but the extended all-Christmas format proved very successful for Sunny 104.5, which prompted B101 to do the same in 2003. Thus for several years Philadelphia had two stations playing all-Christmas music.

Sunny 104.5 changed formats in August 2006 and their all-Christmas programming was dumped along with it. That year, B101 went all-Christmas November 18.

Ratings have consistently shown that Philadelphians are huge fans of the all-Christmas format. For 2007, B101 announced that they'd be conducting an electronic survey on their website. The results would be used to make up the holiday playlist and to decide when the station would flip to all-Christmas. B101 made the switch at 3:00 p.m. on November 21, 2007. Starting that year, Christmas music was sprinkled in with the regular format for the next few days after Christmas. With the all-Christmas format all to themselves, B101 enjoyed a 17-share in the 6+ Arbitron ratings. (Double-digit shares, let alone a few ticks shy of a 20 share, are somewhat unprecedented in the modern era of major-market radio).

In August 2008, a new Adult Contemporary station (WNUW/Now 97.5) launched in Philadelphia with sights set squarely on B101. To draw attention to themselves and to take B101 down a peg, Now 97.5 flipped to all-Christmas at 5:00 p.m. on October 31. B101 began sprinkling in Christmas tunes during the weekend of November 8–9. On November 13, B101 flipped to all-Christmas. Shortly thereafter, 1340 WHAT-AM also went all-Christmas. On November 26, 98.1 WOGL made the surprise move of abandoning its format for the first time ever to flip to all-Christmas and actually went down in the holiday ratings. Considering Wilmington's 99.5 WJBR is close by, Philadelphians found themselves with five all-Christmas stations in 2008. B101 still dominated the holiday ratings. WNUW has since flipped to an all-sports format.

At 3:00 p.m. on November 19, 2009, B101 flipped to all-Christmas and, having the market to themselves once again, achieved a huge 16.7 share (6+ persons) in the holiday book.

At 3:00 p.m on November 18, 2010, B101 switched to all-Christmas, starting with a medley of Christmas greetings from various songs and movies before playing "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" by Andy Williams. Also in 2010, B101 introduced an updated holiday jingle package.

At 6:07 a.m. on November 17, 2011, B101 switched to all-Christmas once again starting with "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" by Andy Williams.

At 7:40 a.m. on November 19, 2012, B101 - "Philadelphia's official Christmas Station" switched to all-Christmas with yet again, "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" by Andy Williams kicking off the season. Debuting new "jingles" between songs including "find your holiday spirit here - B101" and "Thanks for spending the Holidays with us - B101".