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The Holiday Spirit

Getting into the seasonal spirit on radio

I often like to carry a theme for this column, but today I thought I’d just throw in a collection of links that really have no particular theme … just a collection of stuff. Just kidding, it’s Christmas!

A Christmas Carol — 1948 Radio
Here’s an old 1948 radio program… “A Christmas Carol” with Richard Diamond. Diamond was a private detective played by Dick Powell in a popular radio series (and later TV series with David Janssen), “Richard Diamond, Private Detective.” There are several other similar Christmas-oriented old-time radio shows on this page. Including …

Jimmy Stewart — “The Six Shooter” — NBC 1953
What a voice! Who doesn’t instantly recognize Jimmy Stewart? And this opens with a great old NBC spot on getting a radio for Christmas.

History of Five Well-Loved Christmas Songs
Wondering how some of the biggest Christmas songs came to be. They’ll tell you here.

Christmas Jingles
And for the real radio nerd in all of us, jingle house JAM Productions has put together years of their Christmas/holiday jingles all in one groovy location. Here they are. Have fun!

A TuneIn Christmas
The Internet streamer has a collection of several hundred terrestrial radio stations playing Christmas music.

Christmas Radio
These folks are “Broadcasting the Holiday Spirit year round!” So when you need a fix …

And finally …

Radio station Christmas parties. Bet we all have some great stories to share about these. I can go back to my first radio job as a kid in high school. My first station was WJER(AM/FM) in Dover/New Philadelphia, Ohio. The owner, Gary Petricola (who still owns the station today) always treated employees right with nice parties. And they were something else!

As just a 16-year-old in high school, it was awesome to see these DJs who I grew up listening to just being “regular people.” Our morning guy, Bob Jacobs, always had a friendly rivalry with his buddy, Dick Hanchette (our midday guy). Both were incredibly talented on-air personalities and great guys. Dick had his “tradition” of drinking beer from a big glass bowl at the parties. I’ll just say this. I’ll never forget those parties and the many, many laughs between us all.

Here’s a story about the best and worst radio Christmas parties.

On that note, Merry Christmas!

If you stumble across a good or unusual web site that might be of interest, please don’t hesitate to send me the link and any info you might have about it. My email address is [email protected].

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