ITV’s dire Christmas schedule isn’t their fault – it’s ours

Once upon a time, Christmas TV was unmissable. 

We’re talking wall-to-wall bangers you would have to be dead-set on with your decision, because the choice was between that or something just as good a channel over.

But this year’s ITV festive schedule reads like the order of events from any old day of the week, with the words ‘Christmas special’ thrown on at the end.

The BBC line-up is only marginally better, more closely resembling a Saturday schedule and woefully missing anything on a par with last year’s go-getters Gavin and Stacey or Wallace and Gromit. 

One of those two should definitely have been held back for the dire 2025 programming.

When this year’s Christmas schedules were shot into the social media heavens earlier this month, words like ‘dreadful’ and ‘utterly dire’ were bandied about merrily. 

Initially, I was just as miffed – all respect to Freddie Flintoff, but I can’t see a convincing case for why Bullseye merits a Christmas special.

Yet the outrage from viewers started to feel a bit like kicking ITV when they’re already down and left me wondering how many of those naysayers have watched this channel in recent years – in December or otherwise. 

I’ll take a punt in saying they might have been watching something else – such as a particular streaming service that lights up most living rooms these days.

In recent years, Netflix’s own festive TV offering has crept like a streaming behemoth Grinch down the chimney into our living rooms. The first season of Bridgerton may feel like many corsets and stolen kisses ago, but it dropped on Christmas Day 2020 to hundreds of millions of waiting viewers, myself included, I add rather sheepishly.

That now feels like a different time, since now we’ve ushered in the streaming era of festive viewing. 

Netflix has since styled its platform into the home of naff but cherished Hallmark-style Chrimbo films. These drops fill up the entire month of December, creating their own and accessible Christmas Day schedule. I’m normally too caught up in the barrage of TV releases to get on board, but these so-bad-it’s-good films reliably ride to Netflix number one. 

The 1% Club might be one of the biggest game shows on TV, but its festive special can’t realistically go up against the back half of the hugely hyped season 5 of Stranger Things. I’ve never personally watched the 80s-set teen horror, but I’m in the minority. 

The battle for our yuletide attention got all the wonkier last year, when Netflix made a play for the most reliable live TV-watchers of them all: sports fans.

The 2024 Netflix x NFL Christmas Gameday, one of the only live sporting events on that day was a record-breaking one for both parties, with over 30million global viewers tuning in. They even threw in the small matter of a Beyoncé halftime show.

I can only imagine it will be more of the same staggering figures with the two live NFL games on offer this Christmas Day, with a Kelly Clarkson appetiser and a Snoop Dogg halftime interlude.

‘We’re servin’ up music, love and good vibes for the whole world to enjoy. That’s the kind of holiday magic Santa can’t fit in a bag,’ the so-called Doggfather said in the Netflix announcement. With that kind of hard sell, even I’m going to have to have a look-in.

That being said, it’s freeing to no longer have to structure the big day around when the Doctor Who special is on, knowing I can just catch up on a lazy Boxing Day. But that always requires wrestling the remote from my dad for Boxing Day football.

If Netflix can make American football fans of us all, this could become a feature of Christmas Day. This year’s games are streaming in the primetime slots of 6pm and 9:30pm, so you can catch 15 minutes of Lee Mack jokes on ITV before Kelly Clarkson’s dulcet vocals beckon on Tudum.

It’s a whole other can of worms to think how all of this will be exacerbated by Netflix’s potential purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns too many shows you will know to list them all here (Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Friends, anything DC Comics).

That scarily mammoth deal would officially end the streaming wars, with Netflix triumphant. Meanwhile, British channels are fighting declining viewership more than they’re battling each other. 

But they should not be blamed for shifting audience habits. 

ITV faces shrinking advertising revenue and fierce competition from the streamers, so we can hardly expect them to pull first-class programmes from their stockings on Christmas Day.

It wasn’t terribly long ago that the festive schedule was an integral piece in the broader culture of the Chrissmassy season. 

The 1988 festive edition of the Radio Times still holds the Guinness record for the biggest-selling magazine in British history, with over 11million copies snapped up and snaffled home to be hacked at with a highlighter pen.

If we want more Christmas TV worth earmarking ahead of time, then we have to take more of a Gogglebox approach and watch what is there. Droves of viewers deserting linear TV in favour of Netflix will only leave each year’s Christmas schedule feeling steadily more like a relic.

Since it is that time of year, I don’t want to leave you with that sad feeling I got when I read ITV’s Chrimbo run-down. 

There could be hope yet, because ITV is in talks to sell its broadcasting outfit to Sky. 

It’s a link-up that could very well reshape the UK’s TV landscape. 

But with Netflix seemingly primed to swallow all of Warner Bros, potentially tightening its grip on the festive entertainment landscape, we may need a miracle to save our British broadcasters, and the Christmas Day schedule as we fondly remember it. 

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk. 

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