TVSquad

Hey, it's December!

That means that the Christmas specials are about to start, if they haven't started already. Tonight we have How The Grinch Stole Christmas (8:30pm on ABC) and on Wednesday we have Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer (8pm on CBS). And still to come, of course, are It's A Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and many more. Not to mention all of those Lifetime Christmas movies where someone falls in love around the holidays, plus all of the Christmas episodes of our favorite TV shows. I think Heroes is going to have a special episode where Santa goes up against Sylar.

I would have to say that after all of these years, It's A Wonderful Life is still my favorite. I love The Grinch and Rudolph and A Charlie Brown Christmas as much as the next person (Frosty has never been a favorite, though), but It's A Wonderful Life is the movie I have to stop and watch if I come across it channel surfing.

I always get a little bummed out after Christmas and New Year's. The holiday buzz has died down, and the lights still up around town look a little sad and lonely. It doesn't help when the January weather is sunny and 63 degrees (that's just not right people). So forgive me if I post one more story about the holiday season.

TiVo got stats from 20,000 of their users and figured out what Christmas special was the most popular this year. It wasn't any show starring Charlie Brown or Frosty. It was that animal with the shiny nose that wasn't allowed to participate in any organized sports. Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer was the most watched special with TiVo users, and that includes people who watched the show live and those who recorded it.

After the jump, the top 10.

Here are the weekly ratings, by number of viewers.

Funny how the ratings race becomes a little bit more interesting when Dancing with the Stars vanishes from the schedule. Though I guess it's always possible that ABC will give Marie Osmond her own weekly variety show again, and she can dance and sing and faint and cry and sell her dolls and find her way back into the top 10 again. NBC makes a strong showing, with five shows in the top 20 (though I guess two of them are really one show, Sunday Night Football and the Pre-Kick). Also good to see Rudolph at #4. They must think he's cuuuuuuuuuute.

1. CSI (CBS)

• At 8, CBS has Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer.
• NBC has a new, two-hour Biggest Loser at 8, followed by a new Law and Order: SVU.
• The CW has new episodes of Beauty and the Geek and Reaper.
• Also at 8: Food Network has Rachael Ray's Holiday Entertaining in 60, followed by A Barefoot Contessa Holiday and An Italian Christmas with Mario and Giada.
• At 9, Discovery has a new Dirty Jobs, then a new Everest: Beyond the Limit.
• Lifetime has the movie Holiday Wishes at 9.
• Sci-Fi has part 3 of Tin Man at 9.
• Another Christmas movie: Santa Baby, on ABC Family at 9.
• At 10, CBS has the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show.
• ABC has a new Boston Legal at 10.
• There's a new Nip/Tuck on FX at 10.
• Bravo has a new Real Housewives of Orange County at 10.
• TLC has a new Miami Ink at 10.
• HBO has a new Costas Now at 10.

Check your local TV listings for more.

The New York Times has an interesting story about the fate of two of the puppets from the revered TV special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, which first aired in 1964. Apparently, out of the thousands of puppets created for the stop-action animation used in the Rankin-Bass special, only two currently exist: one of Rudolph and one of Santa.

The article tells the story of how the puppets, given to an R-B employee after the show was made, were found in an attic, appraised on Antiques Roadshow, and sold for a nice chunk of change to the president of TimeAndSpaceToys.com/ He then painstakingly restored the heavily-damaged puppets to their original form (details of that restoration are here). Santa and Rudolph are currently on display at the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, where they will be until Jan. 13.

How did Santa and Rudolph get to be in such poor shape? Kids. The person who took the puppets home gave them to her kids, who crammed poor Rudy's mouth with crayons and Play-Doh. Jeez. Those buggers had no sense of history, did they?

You probably remember the classic Sesame Street album Sesame Street Fever (on the right), a takeoff on the movie soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever and the disco craze in general. The producer of that best-selling album died of bladder cancer on Monday in New York City.

Arthur Shimkin also produced the Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer album sung by Jimmy Durante and came up with the idea that spawned Little Golden Records, which included such artists as Bing Crosby, Alfred Hitchcock, Roy Rogers, and Burl Ives. He also produced the 1961 version of Peter and the Wolf, with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. I remember that album really well. When I was in fourth or fifth grade, if you finished your work in class early, you got to go over to the corner of the room, sit in a comfy chair, and listen to albums on headphones, and that was one I listened to over and over again.

The obit says that Shimkin produced over 3000 records, and that is quite an achievement.

Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer is one of my favorite Christmas specials, along with It's A Wonderful Life, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town, but a few things about it have always bothered me. Like the way Santa treats a lot of his workers, from the flying reindeer to his elves, he just seems a little harsh and mopey.

This video after the jump explains it further. It's like a little investigative compilation of scenes from the special to show how much of a jerk Santa is. Is this fair? Or did the person who put it together have it out for Santa and only pick the worst parts? I would say it's fair, because there's a lot of proof, from almost every scene in the special.

CBS will air the beloved Christmas specials Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman on the same night, Friday, December 8.

Wait a second. December 8? Isn't that a little eary for a classic Christmas special? I know that every company starts to celebrate and advertise Christmas earlier and earlier every single year (this year all the stores in my area had Christmas decorations for sale right next to Halloween candy in October), but shouldn't shows this classic be aired closer to December 25, or at least repeated later in December after the December 8th airing?