KOSI-FM in Denver is owned by Bonneville. PD Jim Lawson says listeners to his radio station have voted overwhelmingly to put “Baby It’s Cold Outside” back on the radio. And, the station has done so.
The station began receiving complaints from listeners regarding the song after reading a national story about Entercom’s WDOK in Cleveland pulling the song because listeners believed it contained lyrics about sexual harassment.
On Monday Lawson decided to “rest” the song from the KOSI rotation and began conducting an on-line poll to determine the community’s position. “We value the opinion of all our listeners and appreciate the feedback we received. Respondents voted 95% in favor of us keeping the song as part of KOSI 101.1’s tradition of playing all of your holiday favorites. While we are sensitive to those who may be upset by some of the lyrics, the majority of our listeners have expressed their interpretation of the song to be non-offensive.”
15,000 listeners participated in the poll according to Lawson.
And let’s not forget “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” another delightful yuletide ditty from The Irish Rovers.
In Australia, playlists get beefed up with “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport”, My Boomerang Won’t Come Back” – a tune about a flying doctor, and “Bang A Sheila” – the gentler version.
Still, it’s good to know the PC-narcs are on the case.
And that, my friends, is proof that people’s tastes in music vary in different parts of the country, not necessarily conforming to homogenized corporate playlists. As for “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”…that really isn’t even a Christmas song. It does not mention Christmas or any other holiday. It seems that radio’s criterion for assigning a song to the Christmas playlist is any mention of snow or winter. Using that logic, shouldn’t the classic rock stations play “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” and “Nanook Rubs It” from Frank Zappa’s famous trilogy during the Christmas season?
A digression: What do the Australian stations play on the radio at Christmastime, since that holiday falls in the summer in the Southern Hemisphere?