“A Charlie Brown Christmas” Loved by Almost Everyone
A Charlie Brown Christmas is considered a classic. And rightly so.
A Charlie Brown Christmas is the second longest-running animated Christmas special in television history. It won a Emmy and a Peabody award. The night it premiered on December 9, 1965, 50% of the viewing audience tuned in to CBS to check out Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the rest of the gang.
Everyone loved A Charlie Brown Christmas.
Everyone except the executives at CBS.
They hated it. Let me rephrase that. They hated everything about it. They didn’t like the kids’ voices. They didn’t like that there was no laugh track. They didn’t like the jazz score. They didn’t like Linus’ speech at the end about the true meaning of Christmas.
About the only thing that they did like is the fact after they aired A Charlie Brown Christmas, they weren’t obligated to order any more Charlie Brown specials.
Check out this post at Neatorama by Eddie Deezen and you’ll see how everything the CBS execs hated, helped to give A Charlie Brown Christmas it’s charm.
Of course, after the ratings, positive reviews and awards started rolling in, the execs at CBS probably started to like A Charlie Brown Christmas just a little bit more… as evidenced by the more than 30 animated Charlie Brown specials that have been produced over the years.
