by Flint » Mon Mar 24, 2014 10:20 pm
In the mid-70's, I was tasked with updating Christmas Is, which hadn't been modified "in 5 years". If I recall correctly, the "update" was more of a selective song and feature removal (I was given a list of what to edit out). In the 80's, after I left 'NW, a newer version of the show was finally produced, often featuring the voice of Paul Preston, who read Xmas facts set to "I Saw Three Ships" bg music. Those bits that Paul read would be heard for many many years. In contrast with the original show, which featured lots of Vancouver's best character actors and voices doing entertaining skits & bits, the most recent version of the show has only sparse narrative content such as: not very Christmassy "don't drink & drive" tips, rounded out by a couple of show IDs each hour. The original (1972?) show featured fairly well known songs of its day. The newer version is a very schizophrenic thing with often unfamiliar songs of surprisingly (and not in a good way) unrelated styles. As you can probably tell, I vastly preferred the original "David Houle" version of the show. It had more production value, more entertainment value, and more familiar Christmas hits.