It's Now Safe to Listen to Your Radio...

Stop my demographic. I want to get off.

While preparing for my son's ninth birthday party -- a birthday which was a full week before Thanksgiving; a party which was several days before his birthday -- I made the fateful mistake of switching radio channels. As a stay-at-home Mom with kids in school (finally!) all day, I rely on talk radio to keep me from having full blown conversations with the kitchen cabinets. The 'Triangle' area of North Carolina in which I live boasts a wonderful National Public Radio station, and most days I am tuned to that. I have learned to ignore my husband's bleatings that only those with a pitchless monotone apply for a job as an NPR news anchor; after an hour with Diane Rehm or Frank Stacio, I feel smarter than your average housewife. But this was a particularly slow news day, so I opted for music instead.

Where the Triangle excels with 91.5 WUNC, it fails in the area of music stations. If your tastes deviate from Bubble Gum Pop, Today's Country, or Classic Rock (known to me as the music preferred by my high school classmates who smoked), you might as well pop in a CD. But alas, I rolled the dice and turned to 101.5.

I expected Taylor Swift; I got Andy Williams. He was declaring it, "The Most, Wonderful Time of the Year." As a parent of school aged children, I know that designation is reserved for the first day of school. But Andy was talking about Christmas. It was mid-November, ten days before Thanksgiving and I was supposed to be dreaming about a White Christmas? I live in Cary, North Carolina, for Pete's sake. A White Christmas here means frost.

The next day's newspaper clarified what I suspected. In a quest for higher ratings, particularly in these challenging economic times, not one but TWO local stations opted for an all-Christmas format well before the preceeding major holiday. But it was the next statement that made me put my head in my hands: after making the early 'switch' last year, ratings "rose 38 percent in the target demographic, women aged 25 to 54". My girlfriends done me in.

While I am happy that women aged 25 to 54 are a target of something other than identity theft and chain emails from people who haven't yet learned to cut-and-paste, I implore you, gal pals, reverse this trend! Isn't it bad enough that the supermarkets have Halloween candy in August? You buy the economy-sized bag and it doesn't last until September. Aren't you frustrated when you shop for Halloween costumes in mid-October and the remaining options are the off-colored Power Ranger and the slutty princess? When we should be looking for decorative yet otherwise uesless gourds for our Thanksgiving tableaus, we are keeping the beat with Trans-Siberian Orchestra becaused the marketing geniuses at the local radio station think it, "puts us in a happy mindset".

I hate to break this to you Einstein, but evidence of a world gone awry does not put me in a happy mindset. When you take away the rational safety of one-major-holiday-at-a-time you are provoking chaos. Sure, the lines are longer at Target because you have people buying an 8-foot-high skeleton inflatable, pumpkin pie spice and The Elf on a Shelf in one trip,

but does it merit that requisite insanity? Maybe it's just me, but I want my Halloween in October, my Thanksgiving in November, and Christmas after Thanksgiving. Immediately after is fine, but by forcing me to get in the premature Christmas spirit, WRAL, you are likely to retard it. You dilute the spirit of the season by making it too long to feel special. I will listen to your station -- indeed, it is the only time of year I'll hear the Carpenters, Burl Ives and Kelly Clarkson on one playlist -- but only when it makes sense to do so.

It's now safe to listen to your radio: according to www.wralfm.com there are 16 days, 16 hours, 49 minutes, 54 seconds til Christmas.