holidays specials

This is the kind of TV ratings news that warms my heart: last night's airing of Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer on CBS was the most-watched show of the entire night on any of the other networks, including Christmas in Rockefeller Center, So You Think You Can Dance, The Middle, The Grammy Nominations Concert, and Glee.

The Rankin/Bass Christmas special with the dentist elf and random misfit toys grabbed an impressive 10.7 million viewers.

That's pretty good for a 45 year-old animated special that we've all seen 97 times (and probably own on DVD), no? There's something amazingly comforting about that: the same Christmas specials (Rudolph, Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, It's A Wonderful Life, A Charlie Brown Christmas, etc) are pulled out every single year and we still watch them. It's the sort of television comfort food that we can't resist.