Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Thanksgiving programming

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving for those of us in the States, and being a prominent holiday, means that there's all sorts of specials going on out in the TV world. There's been a Thanksgiving Day football game going all the way back to the 1930s, and for decades it was the Lions hosting the Packers after a Thanksgiving Day Parade. When the Dallas Cowboys came into the league in the 1960s, they offered to host a second Thanksgiving game; having to play on Thursday isn't an easy turnaround.

Anyhow, this is all to say that it's not just TCM that changes things up for Thanksgiving. TCM is running a bunch of family movies as usual; mostly stuff I've recommended before except that I don't know if I've ever mentioned Places in the Heart (tomorrow at 1:30 PM) before. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a Fox film, but that's on TCM tomorrow at 3:30 PM.

It doesn't really look as though FXM Retro is doing much for the holiday; I guess we'll have to wait for Christmas to see if they run the Alastair Sim Christmas Carol on an endless loop again. Which brings me to why I really brought up this topic today.

As I was looking through the various schedules, I noticed that StarzEncore Classics had Planes, Trains, and Automobiles on tonight at 10:00 PM. It's a perfect movie to kick off Thanksgiving. But: they're running it on a loop, 15 times in 24 hours, roughly 96 minutes apart. I'd assume they're just trying to get anybody who's channel surfing and runs across the channel, which isn't a bad strategy for a niche channel.

Don't get me started on the Hallmark Channel's running sappy Christmas TV-movies round the clock for about two weeks now, although that must be enough of a success as they do it year after year and it's not the same set of TV-movies every year.

1 comment:

Pogi said...

I will happily watch Planes, Trains, and Automobiles as often as they choose to run it. It's a pitch perfect blend of comedy and pathos with both Steve Martin and John Candy in top form. I've always thought that Steve Martin was at his best playing the self-absorbed, smugly neurotic, asshole than the goofier roles which made him famous.