Warm Blanket coming to TV

The already-out-on-video Peanuts special Happiness is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown is heading to US airwaves on Thanksgiving night. There’s a couple interesting things about this:

  • It’s not airing on ABC, who holds current broadcast rights to the “classic” holiday specials, but on Fox.
  • It’s airing at 8:30 (following an Ice Age Christmas special), which means that either their putting it in a weird 8:30-9:30 slot or they’re trimming it in half. (The Fox Thursday schedule is usually made of hour-long shows.)

I’d have to say that all in all  this is pretty good news. With the rapid decrease in DVD sales, I was worried that new animation would have trouble being profitable; the willingness of a TV network to air this production, not coming from the old animation crew, should do much to make such productions viable.

Animated Peanuts
We finally know how Charlie Brown did at the Super Bowl!

If you’ve never seen the 1994 Peanuts special You’re in the Super Bowl, Charlie Brown, well, you’re not alone. It aired only in 1994, linked to that year’s Super Bowl, on NBC, which had never before and has never since aired a Peanuts special. It has never been rerun, never …

Animated Peanuts
Free Snoopy Weekend

Apple just announced that this weekend, you can watch all of their original programming for free (you will have to sign in for an account, but not a subscription.) This means The Snoopy Show, Snoopy in Space, Camp Snoopy, and the new Peanuts specials that were created for Apple should all be …

Animated Peanuts
RIP Willie Mays

Willie Mays has died. The baseball great lived until the age of 1993. “Why is that relevant to a Peanuts blog?” I hear of a few of you cry (though many of you know better.) Before Lee Mendelson had any connection to Peanuts, he made a documentary about Mays… and …