Today is St. Nicholas Day
December 6, 1964
Rudolph the Red–Nosed
Reindeer the long-running Christmas television special produced in
stop motion animation by Rankin/Bass first aired
on the NBC television
network. The show was sponsored by General Electric under the umbrella title of The General Electric
Fantasy Hour.
The special is based on the song by Johnny Marks, which was in turn taken from the 1939 poem of the same title written by Marks' brother-in-law, Robert L. May. Since 1972, the special has aired over CBS, which unveiled a high-definition, digitally remastered version in 2005. As with A Charlie Brown Christmas and How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Rudolph no longer airs just once annually, but several times during the Christmas season. It has been telecast every year since 1964, making it the longest running Christmas TV special, and one of only four 1960s Christmas specials still being telecast (the others being A Charlie Brown Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and Frosty the Snowman). And again, as with the Charlie Brown special, Rudolph has now been shown more than thirty-one times on CBS, although in this case, CBS was not Rudolph 's original network.
In its December 16, 1995 episode, the Fox Network's comedy series MADtv aired "Raging Rudolph" which also parodied Martin Scorsese's films. In it, Sam The Snowman narrates in a Joe Pesci-like voice how Rudolph and Hermey got violent Mafia-style revenge on their tormentors
Stay Tuned
Tony Figueroa
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