Dr. Gerry Grzyb's "The Christmas Show"

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About the Christmas Music Programs on WRST-FM at UW Oshkosh

Each year in the week before Christmas, WRST offers what may be the widest variety of Christmas music heard on any single radio station. The programs are developed and hosted by Dr. Gerry Grzyb (known on the air as "Doctor Christmas"), a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh who has also served as the station's seasonal music coordinator since 1989. Dr. Grzyb draws upon his personal collection of almost 5,000 Christmas CDs for his programs, which serve as a listener's guide to the very best of all types of Christmas releases. Since 1994 he has also written lengthy reviews of new Christmas CDs for the Appleton Post-Crescent (the largest paper in the listening area, with a circulation of 75,000). While he is only on the air for one week per year, his programs are very popular in Oshkosh and the surrounding area. For the past five years Gerry has served as a national judge for the "Indie" awards given by the Association For Independent Music (AFIM, formerly NAIRD). Not surprisingly, he judges in the Seasonal category.

For most of the year WRST is student-run (under faculty supervision). The station format is talk radio for the first part of the day (it is part of the Wisconsin Ideas Network of Wisconsin Public Radio), and the remainder of the day is mostly filled with jazz and alternative rock. But the students go home for Christmas break, and Gerry's programs constitute almost all of the music programming in the week before Christmas. As his playlists show, there are no format restrictions whatever on his programs.

Christmas Music Playlists
1993	1994*
1995*	1996*
1997*	1998*
1999*	2000
2001*	2002*
2003*	2004*
2005*

Since Dr. Grzyb is only at the station for a few days before Christmas, please use the following ways to contact him:

MAILING ADDRESS: Dr. Gerard J. Grzyb, 3048 Saffron Lane, Neenah, WI 54956

OR: UW Oshkosh Dept. of Sociology, 800 Algoma Blvd., Oshkosh, WI 54901

E-Mail: grzyb@uwosh.edu

Home Phone: (920) 729-6793 - Office Phone: (920) 424-2040

          If you wish to view the pages as they originally looked, broken images, broken links, and all, the following links go to the pages as last backed up by the Internet Archive in November 2001, shortly before the WRST server died and all the pages became unrecoverable.

(Historical pages which cannot be updated)
• Gerry Grzyb's Christmas Show (WRST page)
• Playlists: 1994 - 1995 - 1996 - 1997 - 1998 - 1999 - 2000

• Official UW Oshkosh News Bureau Press Releases and articles from The Bulletin about "The Christmas Show":
  • 1998 - 1999 - 2000* - 2001 - 2002*
              Starting with 2003, I could not obtain permission to install a text/html version of any News Bureau article. All issues of The Bulletin are now on-line, including the ones with articles about Gerry's show, but only in PDF format. Unfortunately, The Bulletin ceased publication permanently as of June 24, 2004.
  • 2003 (scroll down to page 4) - (requires Adobe Acrobat reader)
              Warning to Windows 98 users: The lastest Acrobat reader which will not crash your computer every time it runs, is Version 5.0 . Be careful which version you download.
              If you are incapable of reading a PDF document, please write and I (the Webmaster) will send you a photocopy of the article. Be sure to include your postal mailing address with the request.
  • 2004 - As far as I can find, UW Oshkosh did not publicize this year's show anywhere on their website.

• UW Oshkosh Sociology Professor [Archive]*   (what Gerry does the other 51 weeks of the year)

• Reviews of "The Christmas Show" in the Appleton Post-Crescent
  • Post-Crescent 12-19-2004, by Jim Lundstrom, Post-Crescent staff writer

• Christmas CD reviews written by Gerry Grzyb for publication in the Appleton Post-Crescent
  • Post-Crescent morning edition locations
              [where the Appleton Post-Crescent can be regularly purchased, unfortunately, no Oshkosh locations are listed]
  • 2001* - "From country to choral, these stocking-worthy Christmas CDs are worth a listen"
  • 2002* - "Christmas CDs ring in a musical season"
    [Webmaster's note: Opening paragraph received from Gerry not included in the Post-Crescent's article]
  • 2003* - "Local Christmas music fanatic once again uncovers the musical gems of the season"
  • 2004 - "Music to get you in the holiday mood"
  • 2005* - "Sounds of the Season"
              A much longer article* appears on the WRST website.

    (Most of the CDs reviewed above can be obtained at the stores listed on the
    More Information on Christmas CDs and Where To Get 'Em page.)

• FolkLib Index - Wisconsin Christmas discography*
• FolkLib Index - Wisconsin Music Stores
• Search this page and all pages marked with "*"

Known links to this page:

• None. Please write if you know of anyone who links to this page.