Christmas TV 2019

Well, there was an obvious reason why that was the case up until the mid-eighties, they were physical models which were set up in Pres A, so the less time they tied up the studio, the better. Presumably that was a convention they decided to continue.

I never found it especially strange, and certainly in the week between Christmas and New Year there were often quite a lot of regular programmes, including full-length Six and Nine O'Clock News. In those days too you never had any special idents, there was one which was used all the time, so it seemed exciting enough just to have a different one for three days.

Some new programmes from RTÉ's Christmas schedule have been leaked out already with unofficial announcements.

There will be a full programme covering Brendan Grace's fundraising concert at The Olympia Theatre in Dublin with the Forget Me Not's choir before he had his untimely death to Cancer earlier this year. Some footage from the concert has been shown already on his documentary before his death called Brendan Grace Thanks for the Memories.

There will also be a documentary on the late Niall Tobín's career on stage & screen in Ireland & in Hollywood which will be shown on RTÉ One very soon. Actors like Stephen Rea & Holt McCallany will be talking about their working & personal lives with Niall over his long career before he had his very recent death not too long ago at age 89. R.I.P to him & condolences to his family.

I don't know the dates for these programmes as of yet. RTÉ will release that info in full after The Late Late Toy Show this Friday.

Doesn’t it stem from the mechanical models of the idents being set up in to a different studio that would be free over the Christmas bank holidays but would need to be used after the 26th? Why that continued for many years after the non mechanical models I don’t know.
However we have now gone from one extreme to the other with idents airing well before Christmas or the start of Christmas programming.

As for Christmas editions of programmes I also remember in the 90s that some specials aired between Christmas and new year and that daytime was flooded with family movies and classic sitcoms, etc. I can understand commercial broadcasters pulling Christmas specials earlier to attract viewers and advertisers before the holiday, maybe the BBC just follow suit.

Commercial channels really want to attract as much viewers from November 1st for their Christmas ad revenue campaign. I remember an advertising company saying that the final weekend before Christmas is the last peak for commercial revenue for the channels, as this is when most families watch TV and go for a last spending spree.

The worst days for commercial channels are Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, with a little surge afterward with the sales, but post Christmas is always bad.

A November 30th launch would be a first. Can't see it happening, though. Still reckon this Sunday.

Usually the change in the backdrop design of the BBC Christmas website is the sign of the approaching presentation, so we should keep an eye on www.bbc.co.uk/christmas

I expect this year will be the last year for a while that we see a weekend launch for the Christmas idents.

Re: the talk about how BBC Christmas idents only used to be shown from 24-26 December.

Came across a comment on a YouTube upload of the BBC One Christmas 2000 ident (by our very own nwtv2003) which will be of interest to TV Forumers:

Oh, also, I've only just noticed this but is that the animation from the 1991 Christmas ident in the background during Paul Daniels' bit in the 1993 Christmas trail?

I tend to agree. This was mentioned in another thread recently, and here’s what I said there:



I believe that in the cases where we had an extra bank holiday, Christmas presentation continued on this “Christmas Tuesday”.

The ideal time to introduce the idents, in my opinion, is probably the Friday evening before Christmas when it falls midweek, for the reasons Rich Tea states above. Many people (not all, of course!) “break up” from work that day and for them, the holiday begins. I don’t see the point in debuting the idents some weeks before any Christmassy programmes are shown.

I can see it now

“As you can see we’ve put the decorations up here on BBC One. In half an hour Panorama, but first Andrew Neil interviews the leader of the Liberal Democrats”