Holiday creep has been a longstanding TV phenomenon, but as broadcast networks confront their own mortality 365 days a year, they are less likely to give a prime time hour over to Charles Schultz or Rankin-Bass creations then they are airing an awards show or a repeat of a successful series. On cable, however, targeting is everything, so the generation-old notion of tailoring content to those just back from Christmas Tree Shops and the mall wrapping kiosk has been a major success. It's gotten to the point where the most active holiday networks, among them Hallmark Channel, Lifetime and ABC Family, have started putting pockets of yule content in previously uncharted parts of the calendar and filling the nearly two months between Halloween and the New Year's ball drop with all manner of seasonal fare. (ABC Family, in fairness, kicks off its slate just after Thanksgiving.) How did we get to this point exactly? Here are some key turning points:
The Yule Log -- Don't laugh, but the hyper-targeting of holiday viewers can be traced back to WPIX-TV's annual staple in New York, the Yule Log. Conceived by the station's president, it premiered on Christmas Eve in 1966 and still burns nearly a half-century later. The log even has its own Twitter handle, @PIXYULELOG.
It's a Wonderful Life -- The 1980s were a fertile time for cable's emergence in many living rooms, as well as for low-cost copyright-free rights to Frank Capra's uber-classic. Before Paramount and NBC reached the current arrangement whereby it airs only twice a year, the Jimmy Stewart story was wall to wall on cable, setting the stage for marathons such as TBS' Christmas Story binge. On cable, such stacking is the stuff that cumulative ratings are made of. Thus, the many copycat forays, including "24 Hours of Tarantino" on Encore Spotlight and Starz marathons of Bad Santa and Elf.
Co-branded all the way -- Advertising and cable programming go together like pumpkin and spice. Ad-tech firm Viamedia has found in surveys that 54% of cable viewers have their holiday shopping habits shaped by TV ads. Accordingly, huge chunks of the networks' annual promotional budgets go to promoting their Christmas countdowns -- as much as 60%, in the case of Hallmark. In fact, the holidays have been so additive to Hallmark, the sister company to the greeting-card purveyor owned by Crown Media, that the network runs "Christmas in July" stunt. Mostly repeats of the holiday movies shown on the Hallmark and Hallmark Movie channels, the programming has run for the past two years. Ratings shot up compared with jingle-free years before, so the company decided to double down. In a retail environment that has seen Black Friday start on Thursday, the appetite for distinctive holiday content seems to know no bounds.
The financial upside of stretching the calendar definition of the holidays will continue spreading the cheer for seasons to come. But here's a trailer that captures some of the reaction to all of this early-season land-grabbing. It's for Lifetime's Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever:
