Much obliged to Tim Rogers and Uncle Barky for the reminder: Earlier this week WFAA-Channel 8 yanked A Charlie Brown Christmas to run Good Morning Texas After Dark, which, as Ed describes it, is "basically is a collection of mini-infomercials sharing space with actual non-paid program content." Which isn't the point of this piece.
Because, see, my love for A Charlie Brown Christmas has been well-documented. And even though I own all the special-edition DVDs and soundtracks (for the kid! for the kid!), I was working into the wee small hours earlier this week and went over to Hulu to watch a bit of the show. Whereupon I was greeted by this warning: "This video has been edited from the original due to time restrictions for on-air. At this time the original, uncut version is not available for online streaming." That doesn't make sense -- there are no time restrictions on the Internet! But, sure enough, big hunks of the show have been adiosed, and so a classic about the crass consumerism of Christmas has been gutted to make room for ads. Awesome.
Then I noticed Hulu's source for the broadcast: WFAA-Channel 8.