Good grief: Charlie Brown's Halloween special not airing on TV for the first time since 1966

So Apple are a symptom of the disease, not the disease itself. They are also not the only symptom.

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Don’t forget the retroactive part! A Charlie Brown Christmas and the Great Pumpkin would be entering public domain in the next 2 years based on the copyright terms when they were made.

And by any reasonable evaluation, the economic value those specials have today is as much due to the shared history, the innumerable children who grew up watching them, the endless parodies and references and other cultural aspects as the original creativity. The idea that an artistic creation and its creator exist in a vacuum is kind of silly to begin with but outright absurd when it comes to cultural touchstones like holiday specials from the 60s.

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I’m not sure that there’s any disease or symptoms here at all, when something that was widely available for free to anyone with an internet connection anyway, is now freely available to anyone with an internet connection. Servers and bandwidth paid for it to be available for 144 times the amount of time it was freely available on broadcast tv.

My whole point is what does it gain them. They’re not going to get subscribers because of this and they’re probably getting bad press, so why not make it good press and make it public domain?

What I love about the blurays is that the shadows that the animation cells cast on the background become really obvious. The roughness of it really gives it a handmade feel.

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Looks like you have to have an Apple TV+ account to watch… (even if it is free you have to create an account)

I don’t quite follow either.

Most if the holiday specials have a useful life of about a week before the holuday, maybe a bit more with “Christmas in July”.

If they offer them free, there is only a tiny incentive for people to sign up and pay.

Maybe it’s boasting rights, maybe viewers see ads that Apple benefits from?

FTFY – remember the good ol’ days of broadcast TV?

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Yep! We have a radio show* here that does a Halloween special every year, and they always include this (as well as “Blues for Dracula” and “Call of the Freaks”).

*Thur. 8-10PM, ET at https://wpfwfm.org/

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In recent years ABC would show it twice, once in full, and once shortened so they can presumably squeeze in more advertising. The short version omits, among other things, “Get some disinfectant! Get some iodine!”)

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Good reminder that “free” tv isn’t free either.

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Well, to be clear, it was never really about that. Absurd copyright terms are about corporations hoarding IP. They just use the artists as shields.

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2086? 120 years after it was created. Ridiculous

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Completely. The late stage capitalism of intellectual property laws is beyond fucked up.

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Let’s not forget that when the Christmas special first aired, advertising was part of the show. It was only deleted later.

When you’re five, not only does Christmas come once a year, but a year is a long time.

The Christmas specials were part of the leadup to Christmas, advertising for snowglobe lightbulbs and Coca Cola selling Santa Claus were part of it too.

And the older we get, the harder we try to replicate what we felt at that age, except it can never happen. We’ve seen the specials so many times, the ads don’t seem as exotic (I don’t know if they don’t try as hard, or we just got used to them). New specials don’t appeal to us as adults, we want the childhood memories. Things that were so exotic, a cold bottle of Coke or cashews, good chocolate, or even the Christmas meal, have less potency when we have the means of buying such things by ourselves, whenever we want them.

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Yep. You can never go home again.

Nostalgia just ain’t what it used to be.

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You hate Apple for conducting business and purchasing an exclusive license? Just like the exclusive license CBS had for 50 years and ABC for the last decade? I think your hatred is slightly misplaced.

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Maybe the cable kids have something of their own we late bloomer baby bommers are unaware of… Maybe a Hannah Montana Halloween special?