Originally posted Monday, November 25, 2019 by RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com on his AJC Radio & TV Talk blog
Santa Claus has come to Christian pop station Fish 104.7 today at 6 p.m.
The first song this year was Matthew West's "Let It Snow, Let It Snow," followed by Bruce Springsteen's "Santa Claus is Coming to Town."
The music mix blends classics by the likes of Burl Ives, Nat King Cole and Dean Martin with Christmas tunes by Christian artists such as Third Day, Amy Grant and Chris Tomlin. The first hour also included Leroy Anderson's "Sleigh Ride," Andrew Bocelli's "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," Perry Como's "Home for the Holidays," David Crowder Band's "Joy to the World" and Seal's "This Christmas."
With Thanksgiving on the calendar relatively late, Fish has chosen to start the Christmas format change a wee bit earlier on a Monday evening. Typically, they do it Tuesday before Thursday.
And they have big promotions with Carriage Kia tonight and tomorrow. The free party tonight in Gainesville features Christian artist Laura Story. Tomorrow evening will be Mac Powell and the Family Reunion at Carriage Kia Woodstock.
Kevin Avery, the morning host, did the official countdown from Gainesville.
The station is also starting their annual Christmas Wish program, with requests and donations from listeners. Last year, they did almost 2,000, many solicited from Chick Fil-A locations.
If you want to keep listening to the regular Fish music, for the first time, the station is airing it on the Fish 104.7 HD-2 channel and on the app.
Rival Joy 93.3 will start Christmas later this week and presumably, the syndicated K-Love 106.7 will do so as well.
Nowadays, secular stations such as B98.5 no longer fully switch over to Christmas anymore. They salt in Christmas songs in the rotation and amp up the volume as the holiday gets closer.
