Nostalgia fills the air as the chill sets in.Families of young children and young adults alike wait in anxious anticipation of the classic holiday specials. In October, beloved Halloween-themed movies and TV show episodes are the traditions of what used to be appointment viewing or “must-see-TV”. But now, as more people become “cordcutters” and ditch physical television sets for digital streaming, what society deems “television” looks a little different.
Holiday movies now might be played on-demand whenever one wants, especially when binging for a movie marathon that takes the whole night long. However, this technological change brings up a glaring inequality: all of this assumes someone has an internet connection and a streaming service subscription or bought their beloved content on DVD or even VHS and has the equipment to play it.
If one does not check all the boxes, alas, they will have to go without their favorite holiday special… except for that one special night where it appears on traditional free-to-air network television. Remember just flipping the switch to the station? “Channel surfing” as the oldies called it? Back before the days of digital, that was the norm.
It is still a tradition: every year, CBS shows Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and NBC puts on the Thanksgiving parade from Macy’s in New York City. But for many folks, their holidays just are not the same without “good ol’ Charlie Brown” and his trusty beagle Snoopy. In late 2018, Apple secured the rights to house the Peanuts content library, as well as distribute future-produced Peanuts specials and movies, on what would become its Apple TV+ platform. ABC still had the rights to air the specials back then. In 2019 alone, it would have more than 30 million viewers from live airings and DVR recordings for the Charlie Brown specials over the season from Halloween and Thanksgiving to Christmas and New Year’s Day.
Just a year later, during an uncertain holiday season with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Apple announced that the 1966 special, “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”, would be able to exclusively stream on Apple TV+. Fans responded in uproar in October and ultimately pressured Apple to sub-license the rights to PBS Kids for airing 1973’s “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving” and 1965’s “A Charlie Brown Christmas” on free-to-air TV. That move would continue into the 2021 holiday season, with Apple also agreeing for PBS to air The Great Pumpkin for Halloween, in addition to the aforementioned Thanksgiving and Christmas specials. But it would not last.
In 2022, when asked for comment by a user on Twitter, the PBS Kids account replied “we’ll all have to watch for the ‘Great Pumpkin’ in a different pumpkin patch this Halloween,” referring to the character Linus Van Pelt. In the Halloween special, Linus is on a quest to find the unseen figure that gives gifts to kids on the night of Oct. 31 — which is remarked by the Peanuts fan wiki as a mix-up between Christmas’ Santa Claus and the fall holiday. For 2022, Apple instead offered free windows of four or five days for those not subscribed to Apple TV+ to watch the classic trio of specials, which included the date of the holiday itself. Now, in 2023, in a bid to attract more subscribers, those free viewing windows were cut to weekends much before the holiday the special celebrates.
This poses a problem for nostalgic viewers who do not want to pay for another service, as media companies are locking up traditional holiday specials behind paywalls. Fan outrage has risen to the level where petitions have been circulating and asking these companies to back off on “corporate greed”. It can be argued that in a capitalistic society, these companies only look to serve their interests and their customer base, despite more emotional and humanistic wishes that classic traditions keep going and can be kept alive for future generations. Apple’s move has set a new precedent for this uncertain future of sentimental shows and programming that still have copyright and license protection and may not be as widely cherished as it may seem.
