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"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
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