-

"Christmas!"

I decided to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas for the first time in what's probably been several years, and I soon remembered part of the reason I stopped doing it.
While I'm still irritated by the way commercial TV insists on putting their intrusive logos in the bottom right corner of the screen, I've grown to ignore it most of the time. No, what I forgot was how much worse it's gotten.

While C.B. was introducing himself to the cast of the play as the director, a banner across the bottom of the screen declared "Video of Holiday Bandits - Action News at 11." Hey, kids! Forget this crap! Stay up late to watch the video of the holiday bandits!

I keep forgetting that these shows are just here to space the commercials. I'm an ass like that sometimes.

I suppose I should be happy I wasn't watching it on TNT or A&E, because there probably would have been some animated ad for Law & Order or Dog, The Bounty Hunter once during each segment. As bad as the primary networks are, the cable ones are worse.

No wonder we're all headed for DVD box sets.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I try not to watch TV that much anymore, commercials are getting a bit out-of-hand, but I was never a fan of Charlie Brown. I don’t know why, but I think it had something to do with that theme song or maybe because all those kids were just so depressing to me...
Yeah, but anyway, thanks for your comments!
2:10 PM
Anonymous said…
Charlie Brown? You did say Charlie Brown...right? Yeah. Well, I don't watch it anymore. And I'm okay with that. But I do a Kick-Ass version of Charlie Brown Adult Speak. Glad you got it out of your system, though. Hope that lasts for a while.
3:02 PM
Mike Norton said…
Kimberly: I steer clear of most network fare these days, too, but this was a case of my noticing it was about to come on and looking for something peripheral. The Charlie Brown Christmas and Halloween specials were things I'd seen as a child and were a staple until I was 9 or so. Being a few years older than these specials I probably saw them the first years they hit the air.

Thanks for stopping by!

Tammy? Was that you? All I could hear was a "wah-wah-WAH-wah-WAH" sound.
5:13 PM
Anonymous said…
Yeah, seeing that commercial crawl under the "main event" of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus et al. would be...unaesthetic.

Why?

It's exactly the sort of thing a third of the show's plot was written to decry as a plague!
5:16 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

(TV/streaming video) New & Leftover Items, a Touch of 2024, and some Nostalgic Forensics

-
Image
    So much else calling out for attention, and with watchables already piled up, finding even more things to watch doesn't seem like much of a sane prospect. I'm not even fishing around for new things at the moment, as I need to get some other things done and make some attempt to round out my life a little.       This week on Paramount+, the fourth season of the animated Star Trek: Lower Decks came to a satisfying end. A manic pace of in-universe nods continues to give it the Star Trekiest of Trek feels with the casual, plot-essential trivia drawn from decades of Star Trek shows, woven throughout.       Also there, the contemporary Frasier series' first season hits its halfway point with episode five. I'm enjoying it, but it continues to walk a wobbly line as some of it works smoothly while other moments reek of formula, with some of each overlapping. I'd be very interested in seeing how well or not this new series works on its own for someone who'd never wat
Read more

Catching Up with Old Friends (Streaming media series)

-
Image
   I haven't done any blogging posts on current and streaming media since November 3rd, which broke a streak of weekly ones that had been going since September of 2019 - albeit as part of a different, group, blog. As with many such inactions, it wasn't intended as a formal stoppage, just a momentary delay, but here it is five weeks later. This post's linking theme is the return of fondly-remembered characters. It really should include the recent arrival to streaming of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny over on Disney+, but I haven't really mustered my reactions to that. Instead, I'll stick with two other nostalgic items that arrived this week.       Yesterday saw the arrival of the season finale, episode ten, of Kelsey Grammar's return of Frasier Crane in the 2023 iteration of Frasier , over on Paramount+.      The series picked up on the titular character in the present, whom we haven't seen since his 11-season first series wrapped in mid-May
Read more

Oct.13-19 - More Returns and Changes

-
Image
      Even though I've already watched the pair of debut episodes of Frasier (see next paragraph), and this week's Star Trek: Lower Decks (which continues to do a stellar job of mining  previous Trek series for character, episode and extraterrestrial culture lore and deftly applying them at breakneck speeds), I still have multiple things I'm looking forward to catching up on, including new eps of Gen V (Amazon Prime), Loki (Disney+), and both Archer and Welcome to Wrexham (both on Hulu), along with the first two episodes of a final six for Doom Patrol over on Max... and that's just off the top of my head, so getting this week's streaming post out of the way brings those one step closer for me.       I've watched the two episodes of the new Frasier series that arrived on Paramount+ this week, and while it was a mixed bag it was good to see the character back, with him attempting to move into his third act by returning to Boston, where we first met the ch
Read more