Christmas TV 2020

Found this thread where those of us who've been here forever and a day had a good moan when the 20th anniversary of The Snowman was aired in 2003:
https://tvforum.uk/tvhome/sacrilege-cropping-snowman-8045

The thread makes mention of another similar cartoon - Granpa - which was apparently done in the style of The Snowman animation wise, but it hadn't been on air for a while. Well it still hasn't been seen since AFAIK, and the reason seems to be because it was a TVS production for Channel 4. However it was released on video (albeit in 1994), so while it's unavailable to air, it's not totally inaccessible...

I remember seeing Granpa a couple of times in the 1990’s, even after TVS ended. (But it wasn’t uncommon for TVS repeats to linger around for a few years.) That was a wonderful piece of film, but if you think the ending to The Snowman is sad, Granpa’s ending is ten times more upsetting, which I’m not sure many would be comfortable with whilst watching with their kids, at Christmas.

The TVS archive wasn't an issue until IFC was sold to Fox circa 1997, as that's when the paperwork went missing, so it's not suprising it was able to be repeated and released on video for a while after they went off air, along with several other shows (much of The Family Channel was TVS content for a start).

Is the 4:3 version of The Snowman available on DVD any more? There did used to be a release coupled with Father Christmas which had it, but it seemed to be discontinued in the late 00s after being sold alongside the 20th anniversiary edition for a few years, and only the 20th anniversiary edition (and later on a 30th anniversiary release, along with various ones packaged with The Snowman and The Snowdog which also only had the 20th anniversiary cropped version) was available.

Yes, it's probably more hard hitting than The Snowman as Granpa can be far closer to home (especially as we all grow up and older relatives pass on). The Snowman is only in the kid's life for one night and if it hadn't been for the scarf he had been given on that night, the entire thing could easily have passed for a dream.

8 out of 10 Cats aired their 2020 Christmas special this year, with no social distancing as they filmed it back in January. Not sure if the rest of the series was as well - quite odd for what used to be a topical weekly panel show, though since it's been on E4 they filmed around half the episodes to air the same week and half were more general to fill out the series.

And did anyone spot the Quentin Blake "Clown" ident on Channel 4 this afternoon in among the Christmas animations?

Ugh, The Sun on Sunday had the wrong logos for two channels in it's Christmas TV preview pullout. Channel 4 had the All 4 logo, and BBC Two's was a mock - stylised as BBC two, similar to BBC One's logo, stacked with the BBC above the two, and in a veridian box. Right colours, wrong font - they've never had a lower case logo! I don't know where they got it from - no such logo comes up when you search for "BBC 2 logo" in Google.

Was it this one? (second one down) https://tvforum.uk/thegallery/bbc-branding-2020-lowercase-45370

I've never understood the obsession with having logos in TV guides and EPGs. It adds nothing, in fact in a lot of cases it makes them less legible. Causes the publication much more work and they often aren't even correct

Just put the name of the channel

I'm the exact opposite, I think it is better when the logo is used and properly proportioned to fit the space. Sky's online TV guide looks great, its a pity Sky Q doesn't have the logos and still has them in text form. Virgin Media's EPG uses the logos as well from what I've seen of it, but I understand its a bit of a mess, but that's because of a lack of quality control rather than the logos being used in place of text.

The logos appear on the EPG on BT TV, and I have no problem with it. They seem to be updated correctly as and when too. Most recently That’s TV changed to That’s Christmas, and the logo was changed to reflect this. I guess it all depends on the implementation of it, having the right size slot to fit a logo is usually a good start.

Yes, it was!