Charlie Brown Holiday Specials To Air On TV, After All, In PBS Deal (kare11.com) 56
Last month, "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" wasn't aired on TV, marking the first time since 1965 that the Peanuts special wasn't broadcasted. Instead, it was streamed on Apple+. Now, according to The Associated Press, the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and Christmas specials will return to the air. From the report: On Wednesday, Apple bowed to the backlash, announcing it had teamed up with PBS for ad-free broadcasts of "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" (on Nov. 22) and "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (on Dec. 13). Both specials will also be available for free during three-day windows on Apple TV+ (Nov. 25-27 for "Thanksgiving" and Dec. 11-13 for "Christmas.") For subscribers, the specials will be available beginning Nov. 18 and Dec. 4, respectively.
Charlie Brown is still going? (Score:2)
I can't remember the last time I saw the cartoon here in the UK on TV or in a publication. Must be decades. Didn't the author die years ago?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I can't remember the last time I saw the cartoon here in the UK on TV or in a publication. Must be decades. Didn't the author die years ago?
Feb 2000.
Re: (Score:3)
Schultz wasn't Jewish.
Re: (Score:2)
In other news, looks like slashdot finally managed to wreck the ASCII art spam.
Re: (Score:2)
Didn't the author die years ago?
I know nothing!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I can't remember the last time I saw the cartoon here in the UK on TV or in a publication. Must be decades. Didn't the author die years ago?
Yes, sadly Charles Schulz died in 2000, and his home was consumed by California wildfires in 2017.
And you just reminded me of Danger Mouse. I miss that one.
Re: (Score:2)
Schulz, in his own words, believed that girls hitting boys is funny but the reverse is not. That is not okay.
Re: (Score:2)
Different era, different attitudes, different standards. What makes you think a couple generations from now people won't look back and think your attitudes were barbaric, your fashion stupid, and your morals lacking?
Note that one reason it was funny is that it revealed a hypocrisy in a safe context. His funny depictions are, in part, responsible for the changes in societal attitude that now lead you to not find it funny.
If you read the comics with empathy for the different zeitgeist, you will gain an unders
Re: (Score:2)
You sad wanker.
Re: (Score:2)
Danger Mouse. I miss that one.
Loved it as a kid. Bought a few DVDs later in life and was sort of appalled at the amount of repetitive filler used to stretch out the episodes.
I did at least get the satisfaction of seeing Episode 44, "Play it again Wufgang", a second time. My childhood self considered it the funniest episode of them all, where the villain stole the world's music and Danger Mouse had to get by with sound effects from a cassette player. For some reason while I saw all the other episodes at least half a dozen times, I could
Re: (Score:1)
a search engine confirms all you just said..
Re: (Score:2)
Sadly he did pass away, I think in 2000.
But I've almost never missed a year watching it...since it first aired.
That, the original How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Frosty the Snowman, and Rudolph....I still watch those every year I can and I get to feel like a kid again.
Yeah, sure, these days I usually watch them with an Adult Beverage or two, but it has been a part o
Re: Charlie Brown is still going? (Score:2)
All three boomers who care are pleased.
Interesting dynamics "bowing to pressure" (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not going to put Apple on a pedestal here, but it's interesting seeing fundamentally an IT company's approach to this vs what you'd expect from a traditional cable company or a modern cable company like Netflix, or god forbid Disney. Can you imagine Disney's response? I expect something along the lines of "hahahah No! f-you and leave your credit card behind as you leave."
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Interesting dynamics "bowing to pressure" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Apple is more of a boutique gadget company than an IT company, though.
Re: (Score:2)
When HBO bought the rights the Sesame Street they announced the PBS would be allow to broadcast it at no cost. Of course, pulling it from PBS would have been even more controversial.
apple to get 30% of the pledge drive? (Score:2)
apple to get 30% of the pledge drive?
Re: (Score:2)
One of the most expensive and uncertain things in business is getting and retaining customers, so the natural behavior or a corporation is to get its hooks into you as many ways as possible. If the only way you can see what happens to Hopper in Stranger things is to maintain your Netflix account, then you will, even if you find the usefulness of the platform for third party content isn't what it used to be.
Disney is doing the same thing from the other end: expanding from content creation into distribution
Re: (Score:2)
If you truly don't mind buying your content, then you can still purchase physical media. It won't run on every screen in your house but it's pretty darn easy to backup a movie or tv series if you have the physical media and then stream it from your own hardware.
There are ways if you want to invest your time. Most people invest their money and hope the platform places nice.
Never buy an Apple product (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
You were never going to miss Charlie Brown unless you were a Deplorable. And fuck the Deplorables.
To NOT be a Deplorable, just buy an Apple device and sign up for a monthly billing plan. See, don't you feel partially rehabilitated already?
Put your guns and your Bibles away and join the People's Revolution. Click here to donate.
No, your honor, we are not what Epic accuses us of - we didn't take away Charlie Brown as they falsely allege.
Re: (Score:1)
Have you watched one of those Charlie Brown holiday specials on TV recently? I did with my daughter (on Apple TV, naturally), and they really don't hold up well to modern scrutiny. The storyline seems really cheesy, even for a children's show. The crude animation doesn't look any better in 4K than it did in SD 30 years ago, and my 7 year old daughter thought that it was "boring".
Oh, yeah, Apple was kinda doing us all a favor by getting this outdated show off of the public airwaves.
Re: (Score:3)
Don't be a Grinch.
If n
Perfect for Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
They get exactly what they want out of this, in choosing "ad free" venues to share with. PBS runs one big sponsored by Apple spot (so they get their ad) and anyone else who wants to place ads in the context of this stuff does it on Apple's platform, so they still have their exclusivity in the advertising space.
Re: (Score:2)
That's kind of how PBS functions though. A lot of its operations are supported by sponsors big and small.
Re:Perfect for Apple (Score:4, Funny)
That's kind of how PBS functions though. A lot of its operations are supported by sponsors big and small.
And viewers like you.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes it as. I don't see anything wrong with that either. Apple's commercial interests are being served and a portion of the public that might not otherwise have had the opportunity gets to see Charlie Brown specials (arguably shared cultural icons, you know the sorts of things that actually bind our society together a provide some shared frame of reference and experience).
I don't really see any downsides here. I was simply observing this probably *costs* Apple nothing in terms of opportunity, the number of
Re: (Score:2)
Plus, PBS isn't on Hulu and is probably hardest to watch of the major networks via a streaming service. This is Apple both tweaking major networks and streaming services as well as appealing to its elite intelligentsia base by doing something good for public television.
Re: (Score:2)
PBS has their own streaming service with an optional paid tier.
Re: (Score:2)
Plus, PBS isn't on Hulu and is probably hardest to watch of the major networks via a streaming service. This is Apple both tweaking major networks and streaming services as well as appealing to its elite intelligentsia base by doing something good for public television.
Streaming service? All you need is a digital antenna which isn't that expensive and will pick up the PBS and many other local channels with no problem.
Depends on where you are. In our area the antennas for several local channels are line-of-sight to our house, and an antenna pointed that direction picks up a lot of channels, including PBS. I can imagine that there are people who either live in the shadow of buildings or too far away from the closest transmitter.
But... this would be true if the properties were aired on any broadcast channel, CBS, for instance, where they used to reside in the old days. So your point stands.
One nitpick -- there's no such
Re: (Score:2)
Given it's ad-free, it also would hopefully be the uncut version - not the version airing on TV where they cut chunks out to run more ads during the show.
As for the Christmas Special, Mike Rowe (of Dirty Jobs, etc. fame) did a podcast about it
It's Mike Rowe's "The Way I Heard It", Episode 120 - 30 minutes of disappointing TV. On your favorite podcast player. Alas, I couldn't link to the episode directly.
Re: (Score:1)
Modern Show (Score:2)
Still not forgiving Apple (Score:2)
Traditions (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
And then you stopped watching it because you realized it was crap?
Re: (Score:2)
It's always sucked. (Score:1)