Peanuts Holiday Specials Now on DVD: The Magic of the Original CBS Years

When it was announced that most to all of the Peanuts holiday specials from the 60's/70's would finally be released in DVD sets this year and next, all of us who grew up with these in perpetuity on CBS felt an overdue DVD void about to be filled. At the same time, you had me and arguably countless others who wondered how well those classic Peanuts specials would work on DVD. I've felt the same way about past TV specials and shows I've purchased on DVD that we all remember from childhood. While watching other childhood shows on DVD became an entertaining and wonderful throwback, something was always still missing.

And I refused to believe the suggested idea that merely becoming an adult stripped a layer of magic away while watching them.

Cut to the year 2000, the year Charles Schulz ended the Peanuts strip, his death, then CBS losing the rights to all the perennial Peanuts specials. By the end of that year, it was a somewhat disconcerting feeling looking forward to seeing "A Charlie Brown Christmas" on CBS and realizing that it would be the final year aired there. ABC was going to be airing it and all other Peanuts specials from then on for an indefinite amount of decades.

Maybe it isn't noticed by everybody, but I've always held to the belief that certain classic TV specials are forever branded to a particular TV network if they aired there long enough. Consider that all the Peanuts specials aired on CBS for close to 35 years before losing the rights to Disney-owned ABC. Of course, this doesn't mean that most of us Peanuts fans didn't tune in to ABC in 2001 to see how well "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" or "A Charlie Brown Christmas" played in a different network universe than what we were used to.

The differences were subtle, yet it gave off the feeling of a transplanted film from one comfortable format to a more alien one. All of the TV networks we've grown up with have had their own unique feel and even resolution level depending on how weak the signal was compared to another when going off an old roof antennae. For those of you like me who grew up in the 70's and 80's, you'll remember that watching over-the-air TV meant a different clarity level depending on where you lived and what local affiliate you were watching at the time.

There were also other little subtleties in particular network commercials, familiar announcers, the obvious network logo and even type of programming. When the first Peanuts specials aired on CBS in the mid 1960's, the Tiffany Network was the #1 network on TV with enough great family sitcoms and dramas on the schedule for a network exec to shake a pink slip at (and eventually did). This isn't to say ABC and NBC didn't have similar excellent programming then and through the 70's/80's. Yet CBS was the perfect home for Charles Schulz's characters where their intelligent sense of ideals for each holiday theme gelled.

More than anything that set the look and feel of the Peanuts specials was the introductory "CBS Special Presentation" logo (using an engaging "Hawaii Five-O" soundtrack snippet) that always preceded each one--used continuously from 1972 through into the late 90's. And let's not forget the commercials that wrapped each Peanuts holiday special up in a bow. In the earlier days, the ads were usually for sugar-fortified Dolly Madison cakes and, later, those magical holiday-oriented McDonald's commercials. Prior to my time, it was credit-incorporated references to Coca-Cola.

If all of these elements helped form the Peanuts specials into the way we remember them, how does it make them look when being released in box set form on DVD?
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I've contended that if you're going to release a classic set of specials on DVD, they should show some of the original commercials and the original network logo to give the feeling of watching the show in its original context. Otherwise, the deletion of commercials on the DVD and enhanced qualities on the DVD turns it into something completely different from what our subconscious originally assimilated. Fortunately, a few DVD sets of classic TV out there allow some of that--though usually as bonus content rather than being placed directly into the show.

No need in even mentioning that you can go to Youtube to see any of the Peanuts holiday specials in their original form. They're always taken from someone's ancient and deteriorating Beta/VHS tape collection showing complete commercials, older CBS eye logo and network/local station news breaks. Watching these usually gives me a more comforting feeling than watching them re-run in hi-def on ABC or on a DVD. I admit I haven't often watched any of the Peanuts specials on ABC since that first year they aired there, just because they don't look the same. It doesn't help that they add a newer (and inferior) Peanuts special in the last half hour to pad an hour.

For anybody younger than 20, much of this won't matter. You can't help but wonder how the Peanuts specials play for them today when watching the shows in their original configuration on CBS gave them a much warmer feeling. This doesn't knock the brilliant and iconic writing or original intent of the specials that still mostly rival others. It's merely an untapped philosophy of older TV being a collective process of utilizing all elements of their time to create a special feeling that shaped a generation.

Perhaps it would have helped had the Peanuts specials jumped to ABC early rather than jumping ship after 35 years on CBS. Take for instance the 1964 perennial holiday classic "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." A CBS staple to this day, even I didn't know until recent years that it aired initially on NBC for its first eight broadcasts. Those who grew up with it starting in the early 70's to present, though, remember it strictly as a comfortably-placed CBS product.

That means a younger generation may someday feel upset when the Peanuts specials move to another network after decades on ABC. For them, the nostalgia of watching on ABC will be in place of this article.

Yes, we have to keep it in mind that networks play musical chairs with specials and shows on occasion. But in the chance the Peanuts specials move back to CBS someday, perhaps a nostalgic exec there will try to recreate the true golden era to educate the nostalgic ABC crowd on what they truly missed.

After all, that's really the best way to edify on any superior history, just as Linus did in the final scene of "A Charlie Brown Christmas"...

The Peanuts specials from the 60's and 70's--now on DVD:

http://www.amazon.com/Peanuts-Collection-Charlie-Christmas-All-Stars/dp/B001VFM0TW/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1257153583&sr=1-2

http://www.amazon.com/Peanuts-Collection-Mystery-Charlie-Thanksgiving/dp/B002LIZWS4/ref=pd_bxgy_d_text_b