Don’t look for It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown on television this year.

When I was growing up, watching the Charlie Brown holiday specials on CBS and ABC was an annual tradition.  Unfortunately, after Apple TV+ bought the rights to all of the Peanuts specials in 2018, ABC stopped airing them.  There was enough of an outcry that Apple TV+ partnered up with PBS to air the main holiday specials.  However, it appears that not even PBS will be airing them in 2022.

Instead, you’ll have to go to Apple TV+ and watch them.  The good news is that Apple TV+ will be streaming the specials for free during the holiday season.  The bad news is that it still just doesn’t feel right that none of these specials are going to air on television.  Watching Linus wait for the Great Pumpkin or Charlie Brown buy a Christmas tree on television was a part of the holiday season.  The specials may have been old-fashioned but watching them was tradition.  It was something that I and a lot of other people grew up with.  It always felt good to know that, no matter what else was happening, those specials would always air and that, for at least one night, people could set aside their disagreements and watch them.    Now, you can only watch them online and hope that there’s not too much buffering.  It feels like the end of an era.

It feels like we all got a rock this holiday season.