Listeners fighting back after radio stations ban ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’

SALT LAKE CITY —  “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” may be on the outside looking in during this holiday season.

What happened: Earlier this week, I reported that a Cleveland, Ohio, radio station decided to ban the song from its holiday music playlist.

Well, now multiple radio stations across the country have decided to follow suit.

San Francisco: On Monday, 96.5 KOIT, a station based in San Francisco, banned the song. The station said the Cleveland radio station’s decision and complaints from listeners inspired the decision.

However, KOIT listeners complained. The ban caused “hundreds of comments on social media and via email demanding that ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ be placed back to the Christmas Playlist,” according to the radio station’s website, according to CBS San Francisco.

Now, the company is holding a poll on its website through Saturday, which will determine what happens next.

Colorado: And then there’s KOSI 101.1 in Colorado, which has been deemed Denver’s Holiday Station. The radio station pulled the song this week but then added it back.

The station said it received 15,000 responses in its poll about whether it should air the song.

“Respondents voted 95 percent in favor of us keeping the song as part of KOSI 101.1’s tradition of playing all of your holiday favorites,” KOSI’s program director, Jim Lawson, said in a statement. “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.”

Toronto: Nicola Makoway, who works for CBC Radio, told The Toronto Star the song will be removed from that station Tuesday.

The station has “no plans to play it going forward,” according to Makoway.

Flashback: A radio program director in Atlanta said his station banned the song more than five years ago for the same reasons, USA Today reports.

“We didn’t turn it into public debate, or turn it into a ratings stunt,” Tony Lorino wrote in a Facebook post, according to USA Today. “We just knew it was the right thing to do for the audience we served and quietly removed the song from the playlist. (And, we never got complaints for ‘not’ playing it, either; we had plenty of other great Christmas songs to play, after all.)”

However: A massive poll from CBS New York found a majority of people don’t think the song should be banned.

And Variety made the case that the song is actually feminist and it shouldn’t be taken off the radio in 2018.