The frost is barely on the pumpkin, Halloween is still 10 days away, but oldies station WWSW-FM (94.5) already has broken out the Christmas music. It's close to an airwaves speed record, locally at least, for an all-holiday music format.

The tunes launched at 6 p.m. Friday and lasted through Sunday for one weekend only, as a way to steer listeners who want Christmas music to the station's online offerings: two commercial-free channels, one streaming traditional songs, the other with more variety.

"We're offering a couple of options" rather than going all Christmas, all the time on the air, said WWSW/WKST-FM program director Alex Tear. "It's on demand when people want it, when the mood strikes them, instead of the radio station forcing it on them. Everybody moves at a different pace."

Holiday music formats have become a ratings-grabber at radio stations across the country, especially those with a strong female listenership. Retail advertisers like it as well, because the music gets shoppers into the gift-buying mode.

Traditionally, stations launch the format around Light Up Night -- Nov. 21 this year -- or Thanksgiving to coincide with the start of the holiday shopping season.

"Radio stations that do that usually get a significant increase in listeners and shoppers. It obviously helps their advertisers," said Britt Beemer, chairman and founder of America's Research Group, which monitors retail trends. "It's a great strategy and way to have a market identity."

If playing Christmas music on the radio is mainly about spurring retail, maybe early October isn't jumping the gun.

According to the 2008 National Retail Federation's Holiday Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, conducted by BIGresearch, 40.2 percent of respondents said they planned to start their holiday shopping before Halloween.

Even before the economy started its downturn, bargain hunters have been known to try to spread out spending over a long period, according to the NRF.

Retail giant Wal-Mart put the opening of its Christmas shops on the fast track in early October, partly in response to a similar study that it commissioned, which indicated that three out of 10 female shoppers planned to start their shopping three months earlier this year.

And at retailers like CVS and Rite Aid, Santas and snowmen already are staring down the pumpkins and Halloween masks in the holiday merchandise aisles.

Pittsburgh has had three all-holiday radio stations in recent years. In addition to WWSW, adult contemporary stations WSHH-FM (99.7) and WLTJ-FM (92.9) typically go all-Christmas in mid-November. Last year, WSHH-FM launched it on Light Up Night and WLTJ followed during the Thanksgiving weekend.

WWSW, which began playing all-holiday formats in 2002, held back last year and instead phased in Christmas favorites and increased their frequency as the December holidays grew nearer. That's the plan for this year, starting around Thanksgiving.

The radio station's weekend foray into the holiday spirit isn't the earliest on record.

Last year, former talk station WTZN-FM (now WBZW-FM) started playing Christmas music on Oct. 1. But that was another story: The station used the tunes as a way to draw attention to its return to a contemporary hits format.