Holiday specials were made for color

[NowhereMan 1966]

Originally Posted by bgadow

There was a magic to those Christmas specials. Well, I'm too young to remember the early days but even in the late 70s (my early memories) it was a big deal to see Bob Hope or shows like that. For one thing, you only had one chance. Nowadays things get repeated again and again. Certainly in the 1950s if you had the chance to turn from the drab gray images of everyday television and instead sit down to a beautiful Christmas spectacular...sure, you'd watch that show even if it didn't have the funniest jokes or the best singers.

I remember those Bob Hope specials from the 1970s and 1980s where he would tell jokes, interoduce the All American college fottbal team and so on. BTW, perhaps you sitll see this on rare occasions but back then and in the early days of TV, many such programs had only one sponsor like when Rudolph the Red Nosed Reineer came on, he was sponsored by General Electric. I even remember that many Peanuts specials either had Peter/Paul or Cadbury candy companies as sponsors.