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| “What is it you want, Mary? You want the moon?” |
Every year around this time, TV networks haul their annual holiday offerings out of the vault. Over 80% of them are reruns from season’s past. Some, like A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965), Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) and Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas (1966), date back 45 years or more.
Every year since my days at TV Guide in the ’80s, I’ve been compiling a list of those movies and specials and checking them twice.
This year, the Toronto Star asked me to pull just such a list together for their readers. You can find that story in the Movie section of today’s Star or an extended list here at thestar.com.
The Star list breaks everything down by categories. For example, you can find when NBC and CTV plan to air “It’s a Wonderful Life” (Dec. 11 and 24) or when CBC has another film made in 1947, “Miracle on 34th Street” (Dec. 25) under the heading “A Black and White Christmas.”
I’m also compiling a list of holiday offering here at TVFMF in chronological order. You can jump to it here or by clicking on the handy button that will be up all month at the top right side of this page.
This list will be updated all month. If anybody knows if a Canadian network has picked up Bob Clark’s 1983 gem “A Christmas Story,” once again running for 24 hours starting Christmas Eve on TBS, please pass the information along (or risk losing an eye to a B-B-Gun). Likewise I’d appreciate a heads up on a couple of films I am still tying to track down on Canadian screens, “Holiday Inn” and the colour remake, “White Christmas.” Der Bingle will thank you.
