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.

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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