Hi everyone. This is Jonathan Mosen, with an update from your busy Mushroom FM countdown crew.
Votes have now closed in Mushroom FM's 2015 holiday countdown, and on behalf of the fun guys, I want to thank you sincerely for taking the time to cast your vote at such a busy time of year. If you ran out of time to vote, or you found that choosing 10 holiday songs was too tough a call to make, we totally get that, and we'd still love it if you were a part of our big day. You can still get yourself an invitation to our Christmas party, be allocated a seat at a table, take part in all the festive fun that has already started, and get into the draw for our USD $500 cash prize.
All you have to do to attend the party is listen on Sunday, between 9 AM and 7 Pm Eastern US time, 2 PM until midnight UK. You'll hear the familiar voices of Brian Dalton, Lulu and Brian Hartgen, Glen Gordon, Bonnie Mosen and myself, all helping in some way to play the tracks you chose. If you're in touch with the fun guy on-air and make your presence known, we'll get you seated, and therefore in the draw for our prize.
We're planning on having plenty of fun on Sunday and hope you can make it. Before it all starts, for those interested, here's some information on how your votes are counted, as well as information on eligibility for both casting a vote, and winning the prize.
As you know, we invited voters to rank their favourites in order. In traditional countdown form, we asked that you place your favourite song at 1, and the least preferred from your list at 10. The higher you ranked a song, the more points it was allocated by our computer when it tabulated the data. This means for example that 10 people voting for a song at number 1 would have a higher impact than 20 people voting for a song at number 10.
When votes were submitted, they were emailed to three members of the Mushroom FM team, and entered into the system which automatically calculates the votes. We ensured that nobody voted more than once. Nobody was allowed to rescind their vote after it was cast except for one that was cast as a test during the initial period when we were having technical issues with the voting system. Votes are from real people, to ensure no one was able to stack the deck. The fact that three members of the team could monitor the process ensured we had verification of the integrity of the data entered into the system.
We've received votes from many countries, which is likely to make the list quite culturally diverse, with some local favourites that you may not have heard before putting in an appearance.
If you listen to a lot of holiday music, you'll know that there are many, many cover versions. This particularly applies to traditional carols, and songs that have become Christmas standards. This is why for such songs, we didn't specify an artist. We didn't think you'd have very much fun listening to a dozen versions of the same songs. So we've taken into account where there has been a strong preference expressed for one particular version of a song, but we hope you'll understand if your favourite song is played, but by an artist other than one you specified if there are many recordings of the song.
As stated in our terms and conditions, fun guys and their immediate family were not only entitled, but highly encouraged to vote. We've therefore ended up with a great mix of regular listeners, people who might be checking us out for the first time because of the publicity relating to the countdown, fun guys and their family. So you can have absolute confidence that the countdown we play on Sunday is a faithful reflection of exactly how everyone voted.
While no one has been excluded from voting, the computer has a flag which is set so that fun guys and their immediate family are not eligible for the cash prize. This will be drawn by computer from the list of people who have seats at the Christmas table, with all fun guys and family excluded. At some point between 9 AM and 7 PM, we will draw a name and announce a potential winner. That winner will have five minutes to contact us. If they do not, we will draw again, and repeat the process until we have heard from someone who's name has been drawn.
Right, with all that serious stuff out of the way, we hope you'll join us on Sunday, in the knowledge that your vote has counted, and with the expectation of having plenty of good fun right ahead of Christmas.
Thanks for all your support.