We’re two days post Christmas, and the commercials are still coming…for today.
Today’s commercials were taped on December 25, 2003 during an airing of the 1986 Made-for-TV movie The Christmas Gift, which originally aired on December 21, 1986 on CBS. If you’ve never seen this movie before, John Denver plays architect George Billings, who travels to Georgetown, Colorado, a small town that believes in the miracle of Christmas and Santa Claus. He takes his daughter Alex under the guise of his boss “sending them on vacation,” but in actuality, George’s visit is actually for work. His boss chose this small town from a map to “redevelop” the community with ski resorts and condos in mind. It’s a sweet, if not slightly saccharin movie with all the charms of a Made-for-TV film, with a little holiday cheer thrown in for good measure.
Networks don’t make movies quite like this anymore. Not that they’re high art, but times have certainly changed.
Anyway, this set of commercials aired on Lifetime Network during their Christmas Day showing of the movie (yes, I had my VCR on a timer while my family was visiting for Christmas – I saw this the year before and fell in love with this movie!), and has all the feels of one of those networks that local avails cut in on.
Included in this commercial block…
From a time when cassettes were still sold (I worked in a video store in 2003, and yes, videocassettes were still widely available), and AOL keywords could steer you to the website you needed, all so you could buy that country music compilation from Time Life!
Oh no, it’s Error 471!
(If you’ve never seen Error 471, it’s defined as “caused in one way or another by misconfigured system files in your windows operating system.”)
So that wasn’t some “made for commercial advertising” code after all!
Anyway, we’ve got…
GPS in the days of regular cell phones, Waze app-free worlds, and dedicated in-car GPS systems, all rolled into an “As Seen on TV” Greek Tragedy!
Another “As Seen On TV” product – this one doesn’t focus on the dramatics of the usual commercials, but instead shows people eating donuts!
And coming up later today…movies I didn’t tape!
I loved Lifetime in the 2000s, it still had the 90s feel to it, lots of “As Seen on TV” glories, and still aired good movies, especially on holidays.
Go on, enjoy this commercial block, and think of it as a post-Christmas/pre-weekend gift from me to you!
See what I did there?
I love how cable channels in the early 2000s still had all the trappings of the late 1990s. Makes the commercials even more special!
I hope you’ve enjoyed Christmas and all the offerings I’ve had this month. I’ll be retiring the Christmas stuff for the season, but I still have some New Year’s stuff coming up next week!
Have a fantastic Flashback Friday, and a great weekend!