Wednesday, November 22, 2023

Thanksgiving programming on the movie channels

If you think about it, there aren't that many movies that are about Thanksgiving itself, certainly not like Christmas-themed movies. It being a time when families get back together, and hopefully don't have a bunch of family drama. (For me, the day is going to be just me and my elderly father, and I'm pretty much OK with that.) So holiday programming, beyond football, tends to be warmer family-oriented stuff.

TCM, unsurprisingly, is getting into the idea, with a bunch of family-friendly movies all day, or at least starting with the 6:00 AM broadcast day start that TCM has traditionally had. The morning and afternoon are more children's stuff, starting with Jack and the Beanstalk at 6:00 AM and including classics like National Velvet (3:00 PM). Prime time is still decidedly family friendly, but as much stuff that feels like it would have been marketed to parents rather than children, starting at 8:00 PM with Spencer's Mountain, the same material that would become the TV show The Waltons in the 1970s.

FXM isn't doing quite so much for the holiday. Sure, there's a pair of Shirley Temple movies starting at 6:00 AM with Baby Take a Bow followed by The Blue Bird, but the afternoon/evening schedule is two of the Deadpool movies, and overnight there's a back-to-back airing of the 2019 version of Black Christmas.

As for other channels? Well, I'm sure somebody will consider something like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (9:00 PM on StarzEncore Classic) to be a family film.

At any rate, happy Thanksgiving to all the Americans reading this.

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