Christmas TV 2018

On a side note. Christmas schedules on British television used to come under the tight regulations which controlled broadcasting hours by the Postmaster General. However from around 1960 the Postmaster General granted exemptions from the restrictions, so Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day were the only days of the year BBC and ITV could air for as long as they wished.

For the remaining 362 days of the year, they were restricted to 7 or 7.5 hours a day of normal programming. That all changed in 1972 with the lifting of all restrictions on broadcasting hours.

Well, this is the thing too, you can look at the BBC1 ratings from the eighties and nineties and compare them to now, but it's a completely different world. In 1993, ITV as you say was appalling, just back-to-back films, and then BBC2 and C4, as was the case in those days, was pretty esoteric viewing majoring on opera, ballet and the fine arts, and during the evening both got an audience of offically zero for some of their programmes. So for the majority of the audience it was BBC1 or nothing.

These days C4 is as populist as BBC1, BBC2 show Dad's Army and the like, and you've got ITV2 getting a million viewers for a Bond film. It's amazing BBC1 still gets as much as it does.

Was Christmas Day 1993 a conscious effort (or lack of) by ITV? They didn't even have Corrie!

Well, Greg Dyke did say later that they thought it wasn't worth the effort - they were far more interested (as they still are) in November and early December when the big advertising revenue was to be had, rather than wasting big shows on that day. Though this was the only year when they were so obviously cynical in a way that was noticeable to the audience. I remember the celebrity Gladiators was initially scheduled for Christmas Day, and throughout the feature pages in the Radio Times they referred to it being there - but at the last minute they shifted that to Boxing Day as well.

The years either side weren't especially better, either - in 1992 I remember there being a bit of excitement because they premiered Big in early December rather than at Christmas as people were expecting. On the day itself there was Corrie, Blind Date and Barrymore but then just a load of films. And in 1994, despite the year before, it wasn't all that special either - Corrie, Blind Date and Heartbeat came into the schedule but that was about it, the only other excitement was that the film at teatime was Sleeping Beauty and not National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

The only real difference between 1993 and some of the other years around that time was that they didn't even bother with tokenistic festive programming, including Corrie, and just showed back-to-back films.

Odd thing is scottish opted out of the network in. Both years to have umpteen local programmes, but still tool the crappy films. Im sure i have xmas listing for stv somewhere.

Ah, the traditional "IT'S THE SAME SHOWS EVERY YEAR BRING BACK MORCAMBE & WISE!"
Brought to you by the same "these days" bores who complain about the same faces presenting everything and how they don't make them like Wogan, Brucie & Monkhouse anymore. Who of course, between them, presented pretty much everything over the best part of 3 decades.

So, who wants to see the first provisional schedules for 22-28 December?



29 December - 4 January

Uhh, full of repeats.

Gotta get their money's worth out of the rights to "To be Announced".

If Channel 5 did get the rights to that show, it would still be better than anything they are currently airing.

Back to Sky and although their programme information has TX times embargoed until 4 Dec, the information is in Digiguide now so here's the detail:

Sky One:
The Queen and I is at 18:00, repeated 15:30 Christmas Day. more info (click)...

The Greatest Showman is Sky One's Christmas Day movie at 17:00.
On Boxing Day Sky One are showing three PL matches - Fulham v Wolves, Brighton v Arsenal, Watford v Chelsea in simulcasts with Sky Sports PL.

Sky Cinema's big Christmas Day movie is Avengers: Infinity War

They are also promoting the NBA on Christmas Day and South Africa v Pakistan 1st test on Boxing Day.

Sweet God, why did they bother. The amount of TBA is astonishing. Waste of time. This is the week where the main channels are in discussions over scheduling over Christmas. I would love to see the back and forth of those discussions.