In last week’s commentary, I focused on the overall streaming experience of Townsquare’s stations on various platforms. This week, let’s drill down to specific national stations, and why their programming strategy doesn’t make sense either.
Launched just before Christmas 2012, the only promotion these stations ever got was in the update description for Radio Pup. These stations were all music, no jocks or imaging for the first couple of years, and some came and went. Even back then, Townsquare was building news magazines to go along with each of its formats. The most noteable of these are Pop Crush and Taste of Country, but they also have Loudwire, Ultimate Classic Rock, XXL Mag, and All Christmas. With the exception of All Christmas, each of these brands now has a syndicated night show, run on all Townsquare stations and available for external syndication through Compass Media Networks.
A couple of weeks ago, in my review of various Christmas music stations, I complained of a station that was very old, traditional, and slow, but now appeared to be dead. This station was Townsquare’s Christmas channel. While for some reason it doesn’t work on Radio Pup anymore, the stream still exists on its website. In investigating some of the other channels, I found that XXL Mag was actually running its associated night show. So, I decided to take a listen to all of these channels, but didn’t get very far.
The first sign that this wasn’t going to work out the way I had intended came when I decided to listen to Pop Crush. The listen live link was labeled “Listen now, Pop Crush Nights with Lauren Snap.” If this was in fact simply a replay of the Pop Crush night show 24/7, there was no point in me reviewing it, but I figured I’d take a listen anyway. What I actually got has taken me three days of listening multiple hours a day to figure out. This channel appears to be a compilation of bits from the show, mixed with music. The music rotations are something I’m still having a hard time figuring out. While the bits seem to be on one rotation, the music seems to be on an entirely different one. Sometimes, the bits will play in back to back hours, while other times bits will play several hours apart. This isn’t a rotation of bits though, either all the same bits will play in the same order two hours in a row or all different bits will play. The music is on a rotation I’m still having a hard time figuring out. I had thought it was a 23 hour loop, but occasionally different songs will pop up in certain timeslots of the loop. If this is a best of channel, it also doesn’t make sense why there are commercial breaks, but the channel seems to follow the clock of the show. There is also no song and artist information available in the stream, which is strange if the music is not what it is in the show.
The Christmas channel doesn’t run this way at all. It now has imaging and runs commercial free. Unlike Pop Crush and presumably the other streams, it also has song and artist information. While the most traditional of the Christmas stations profiled here this year, it wasn’t as old and sleepy as I remember it. Here’s that station as heard on 1/6/25 at 11 A.M.
- Brenda Lee – ROCKIN AROUND THE CHRISTMAS TREE
- Perry Como – The Twelve Days Of Christmas
- RONETTES – I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
- Leroy Anderson – Sleigh Ride
- Kelly Clarkson – MY GROWN UP CHRISTMAS LIST
- BAND AID – Do They Know Its Christmas
- Eartha Kitt – – SANTA BABY
- Carpenters – I’ll Be Home For Christmas
- Trans Siberian Orchestra – CHRISTMAS EVE SARAJEVO
- Whitney Houston – Do You Hear What I Hear?
- Bobby Helms – JINGLE BELL ROCK
- Ray Conniff – Little Drummer Boy
- ELTON JOHN – STEP INTO CHRISTMAS
- Eagles – PLEASE COME HOME FOR CHRISTMAS
- The Chipmunks – The Chipmunk Song
- Jose Feliciano – Feliz Navidad
- EURYTHMICS – Winter Wonderland
- John Legend – HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS
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