We missed this before Christmas, but Mayor Slay sent us all a special Christmas message…through the words of Dr. Seuss:

Don’t think we don’t appreciate the sentiment Mr. Mayor.  We do!  …but what the hell did you record this with?  A 7 year old cell-phone?

Every time a St. Louis has a hit on its hands, it gets knocked down on the national scene, like Imo’s or Ike Turner.

Take for instance Mister Squiggles.  Every Christmas season needs an “it” toy and every year, some bastards try to take it down.  Why you gotta hate?

The maker of Zhu Zhu Pets, one of the hottest-selling toys of the holiday season, defended its product after a consumer Web site said one of the robotic hamsters carries high amounts of a dangerous chemical.

Mister Squiggles, the light-brown version of the hamsters, has unsafe levels of antimony, said Dara O’Rourke, co-founder of GoodGuide.

Oh and its just the brown one that’s causing trouble huh?  Figures you would say that you racist motherf…

“All our products are subjected to several levels of rigorous safety testing conducted by our own internal teams, as well as the world’s leading independent quality assurance testing organization, and also by independent labs engaged by our retail partners,” Russ Hornsby, CEO of [the St. Louis, Missouri-based toy manufacturer] Cepia, said in a written statement. “The results of every test prove that our products are in compliance with all government and industry safety standards.”

Although antimony has its uses, it is toxic and is allowable up to 60 parts per million, but a study found that our little friend here has 93 to 100 parts per million.  In small doses, antimony can cause headache, dizziness, and depression, but with larger doses stronger symptoms such as violent and frequent vomiting and possibly death.  Which all makes sense that this is from St. Louis, seeing as that is exactly how I feel when watching a Rams game.

via STLMedia

We’ve been through this all before…

Last year it was MOVIN 101.1 that finally had the life-support plug pulled on it and switched to Christmas music in October, and now its 100.3 KATZ thats flipping the switch to Christmas music a little earlier than we all would prefer.  So two years in a row, the majority of St. Louisan’s are left scratching our heads as to why on earth you would want to play Chrismas music this early.

There are two reasons for this, so allow us to break it down for you.

Reason Number One: It allowed you to get a jump on the ratings

As of just a few months ago, the radio ratings system used “diaries” for listeners to tell the ratings people what they listened to.  The problem is that most people wouldn’t put in “105.7 The Point” they would put in “rock” or “alternative” or “country” so stations are allowed to stake claims on these keywords.  For holiday music, the staking process boiled down to a race: Those that start that music first get the keyword.  So when 101.1 started Christmas music last year in October, it got to stake it’s claim to the keyword “Chrismas” so that even if some reindeer sweater wearing grandma was actually listening to Y98′s Christmas music, but just wrote down “Christmas music,” 101.1 got the point.  Trickery at it’s finest.

However, in July a new ratings system came to town that is more or less a pager that people wear and it does all the tracking of what you listen to with codes embedded in the radio signal.  I’m not 100% sure how this effects the keywords, but we would think that means they are gone, which also means the only real reason 100.3 is switching to Christmas music so soon is…

Reason Number Two: It’s a Cheap Time Filler

You hear a lot of DJs on the “Christmas stations” do ya?  Nope.  You don’t pay a soul…hell you don’t even need to keep the lights on in the booth!  Playing Christmas music for a few months is a super cheap way to kill the time.  Step 1: Lock someone in a room. Step 2: Tell them to make a schedule of all the Christmas songs you have rights too. Step 3: Repeat it until the new year.  Step 4: Change the station.

It happened last year, its happening this year, and it will happen again.  But do any of the actual public like it?  Doesn’t seem that way.  Most people we hear from hated it last year and hate it this year.  Right or wrong, people get stressed out about Christmas and when you remind them its coming earlier then they would like, its not going to make them happy.  Add to that the fact that, on the whole, Christmas music sucks donkey dong and you have yourself a recipe for a lot of people dumping on your station.

Doesn’t matter to the stations though.

Maybe that kind of thinking is why less and less people listen to the radio these days…