The Birth of All-Christmas Radio with Jerry Ryan

These days, we take the all-Christmas radio format for granted. Every year, countless adult contemporary--AC--stations temporarily change their format and go wall to wall with Christmas music somewhere between Halloween and Black Friday. Jerry Ryan gets the credit for pioneering the switch when he was vice president and general manager of KESZ-FM in Phoenix in 1990. Once he did it in a market the size of Phoenix, others followed in his footsteps. This week, Jerry Ryan tells radio stories, remembering his journey to the holiday season in 1990 and the thought process that led him to all-Christmas radio. If you'd like more on all-Christmas radio, you can check out a piece I wrote for New Orleans' Times-Picayune in 2016 , and my Twelve Songs episode with Steve Suter, program director for New Orleans' Magic 101.9 . Suter's Christmas programming runs counter to some of Ryan's thoughts on the subject, but in other ways his ideas about radio line up nicely. The episode ends with one of my favorite categories of Christmas song--the holiday adaptation of a seasonal hit. One year, I couldn't get enough of " Macarena Christmas (Joy Mix) ," and this week we're going back to 1993 when the vocal group H-Town turned the sexy slow jam "Knockin' da Boots" into "Knockin' Boots for Christmas" for the holiday season.

You can listen to The Birth of All-Christmas Radio with Jerry Ryan online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

The Birth of All-Christmas Radio with Jerry Ryan is an episode from Twelve Songs of Christmas by Alex Rawls.

This episode is 36:35 long.

This episode was published on Aug 21, 2025.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Twelve Songs of Christmas when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.