The Bitter Story of How America’s Beer Was Destroyed (or was it?)

For nearly 150 years, Anheuser-Busch (AB) was a family company that was passed from father to son for generations.  The Busch family turned a family business into a world-renowned beer manufacturer.  Budweiser was branded to the world as the "King of Beers," and the Busch family wasn't too far from American royalty in terms of wealth and respect (catch my post on American Royalty by visiting http://goo.gl/8Axil).  According to family historians, a couple drops of the company's namesake Budweiser beer were put onto the tongue of each first-born son before he even tasted his mother's milk.

For the early part of the company's storied history, the St. Louis, MO  family demonstrated very good business acumen, mass-marketing a beer that is viewed by many Americans as mediocre at best.  But prohibition all but wiped out most of Anheuser-Busch's competition, yet the family demonstrated considerable business skills, surviving by selling the raw ingredients (it wasn't illegal to sell those, only to assemble them), so the company was able to survive by selling the raw ingredients instead of the full product; even while many rivals disappeared.

William Knoedelseder, the author of "Bitter Brew: The Rise and Fall of Anheuser-Busch and America's King of Beer" said "Their yeast profits saved the company. That was the cash engine that was able to keep the company open."

What really differentiated AB was not necessarily a superior product, but the company's ability to sell it to millions of Americans over regional brews by taking an approach not too dissimilar to other consumer products marketers including companies like Procter & Gamble.  Notably, AB was the first company to pasteurize beer so that it would stay fresh on cross-country trips. However, the latter part of AB history is much like other royal families, and was less about keeping up the family traditions, but being scarred by embarrassments.

For example, in 2008 AB was a $19-billion-a-year Fortune 500 company and was still operating as a family business. August IV, the great-great-grandson of one of the founders Aldolphus, and then-CEO, showed up to speak at a beer industry convention but he couldn't seem to get a word out. "He's stoned, he's loaded, he cannot deliver the speech," Knoedelser wrote.

NPR recently interviewed author William Knoedelseder about a this fascinatingly sordid family story.  Have a listen to that below, or by visiting http://n.pr/VjPXjp:



Of course, the company ceased to exist as a family company in 2008, when InBev, the Leuven (Belgium)-based owner of Beck's and Stella Artois, acquired Anheuser-Busch, the maker of Budweiser, in a $52 billion hostile takeover. However, from there, the tale continues it's interesting (if sordid) path.

Anheuser-Busch Led To The Creation of AB InBev 

In late October 2012, Bloomberg BusinessWeek featured as it's cover story "The Plot to Destroy America's Beer" (see that article by visiting http://buswk.co/TZMIgU) which highlighted how the company, now known as Anheuser-Busch InBev is doing virtually everything right financially, EXCEPT that it can’t seem to sell beer.  For example, the company owns more than 200 different beers around the world, and it would like to buy more, but there's not many brewers left to acquire.

The man in charge of AB InBev is 52-year-old man named Carlos Brito. The Brazilian-born CEO is a millionaire many times over, although he wasn't always that way. BusinessWeek notes he was born in 1960, he was originally known as Carlos Alves de Brito and studied mechanical engineering at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He wanted to get an MBA from an American business school, but he couldn't afford the tuition. Through a family friend, Mr. Brito met a wealthy Brazilian banker named Jorge Paulo Lemann. The two were well matched.

According to a Brazilian business magazine, there were two ways that an employee of Lemann’s bank could quickly be shown the door. One was to appear in the Brazilian celebrity magazine Caras. The other was to purchase a foreign car (Lemann and his partners sold their bank to Credit Suisse in 1998 for nearly $1 billion).  Mr. Lemann thought Brito had potential, and he agreed to pay for him to get an MBA at Stanford University.  When Mr. Brito finished at Stanford, he went to work for a Brazilian brewing company, hence his start in this industry.

While Mr. Brito has been able to transform the company into a global brewing giant, he's operated the company much like a private equity firm, slashing costs at the combined company by $1.1 billion in a single year, for example. AB InBev's margins widened substantially, and its share price nearly quadrupled since the AB takeover.  The company's shares swooned during much of 2011. Mr. Brito has increased revenue and profit, but he's done so almost entirely by raising prices and cutting the cost of making the product.  That's done wonders for AB InBev's balance sheet.  He's also continued that with a seemingly endless stream of acquisitions.

However, much of his success has been strictly financial engineering, and once all the "efficiencies" are squeezed out of the company, he's got to figure out how to actually sell beer, and that's something he's not yet succeeded in doing.  He has yet to prove he can also be a good marketer, which Wall Street wasn't concerned about when he first transformed the company, although Wall Street may be thinking differently about that today.

AB InBev's Problem: It Can't Seem to Sell Beer in the U.S.

AB InBev was going to rely on profits from the U.S. to fuel its growth in more rapidly-growing markets like China. However, BusinessWeek reports that price increases have weakened thirst for Budweiser and Bud Light in their country of origin, Bud Light shipments in the U.S. declined 3% to 39 million barrels from 2009 to 2011, according to Beer Marketer's Insights.  Bud slipped 13%. Anheuser-Busch's shipments were actually rising before the InBev takeover, according to Beer Marketer's Insights.

Mr. Brito's attempts to wring dollars from other previously strong brands, such as deciding to brew Beck's and Bass in the U.S., have also met disapproval. According to Bump Williams Consulting, sales of Bass in food stores fell 17% in the four weeks ended September 9, 2012, compared with the same period in 2011. "They are hurting these brands," said Gerard Rijk, a beverage analyst at ING. "The authenticity of Beck's is that it is a German brand with German water, with German malt, with German hops. This isn't about brand building. It's about costs. Full stop. Heineken would never do such a thing."

BusinessWeek also reports that once Mr. Brito was done with his latest round of merging and acquiring (the last acquisition was Mexico's Grupo Modelo, best known to Americans as the brewer of Corona), shareholders started paying more attention to AB InBev's declining market share in the U.S. (and elsewhere). AB InBev's shipments in the U.S. have declined 8% to 98 million barrels from 2008 to 2011, according to Beer Marketer's Insights.  Last year, Coors Light surpassed Budweiser to become America's No. 2 beer. (Bud Light still remains No. 1 for now, but how long it can retain that distinction remains to be seen, Bud Light shipments in the U.S. declined 3% to 39 million barrels from 2009 to 2011, according to Beer Marketer's Insights). Meanwhile, Bud slipped 13%.  Of note is the fact that Anheuser-Busch's shipments were rising before the InBev takeover, again according to Beer Marketer's Insights.

The company is also alienating lovers of AB InBev's imports like Becks by not importing them anymore (or using the signature hops and other ingredients which gave the products their distinctive flavors). Indeed, a former top AB InBev executive, who declined to be identified by BusinessWeek because he didn't want to get in trouble with his former employer says the company saved about $55 million a year substituting cheaper hops in Budweiser and other U.S. beers for more expensive ones like Hallertauer Mittelfrüh.). And Mr. Brito is now risking the devotion of American beer lovers by fiddling with the Budweiser recipe in the name of cost-cutting.

Americans Are Moving Away From Mass-Market Beer In Favor of Nanobrews

American consumers are drinking less beer than they once did, but even those who do drink beer seem to have moved on from big brews. But, as BusinessWeek reporter Devin Leonard wrote "After one last carnival of cost-cutting, Mr. Brito would have no more easy ways to juice his company's stock." BusinessWeek speculates that Mr. Brito may have set his sights on PepsiCo, but that's entirely speculation, and it may not happen. And, in the meantime, he now has to prove he can sell beer because he's running out of costs to cut. The bigger question is whether he'll be able to do that?

Meanwhile, the growth of America's craft beer scene is well documented: smaller, independent brewers are flourishing even as big beer companies fight declining sales.  Indeed, such brewers are growing even as the overall U.S. beer market shrinks, which means the only place their growth is coming from is from the big guys like AB InBev or SABMiller.

While big brewers have tried to buy their way into that market (typically unsuccessfully), a new, potentially more challenging trend is now emerging: demand for ever smaller, ever more local beer has opened brand new opportunities for talented home brewers to test the marketplace for their beers, which have collectively captured nearly 10% of the market. The mid-six figure investment required to start a microbrewery was too high a bar for most people who begin brewing as a hobby, but for those who are serious and passionate about building a beer business, they can now launch nanobreweries with a much more attainable five-figure investment.  That means hometown breweries can emerge in places where sales for beer was once the domain of national brewers.

American Public Media's Marketplace recently featured a story about what it calls "Nanobreweries" which can be listened to below, or by visiting http://bit.ly/VXlnCD:



While the story of Anheuser-Busch rise and fall is somewhat tragic, this seems to be one example where consumers could actually end up as the winners.  It will be interesting to see how the giant breweries respond to the changes in the U.S. beer market, but consumers are already voting with their dollars, and big brews don't even appear to be on their collective radar screens.  Meanwhile, the emerging youth market appears even more predisposed to accelerate this trend, in much the same way as they've embraced gourmet cuisine (often prepared by themselves).  Winning them back will require more than skilled financial engineering.

Author P.S., January 31, 2013:  Bloomberg News reported (see http://bloom.bg/XqpjIq) that Anheuser-Busch InBev may have to give up more control of U.S. beer distribution or even sell a brewery in order to settle an antitrust lawsuit by the U.S. to block its $20.1 billion takeover of the rest of Mexico's Grupo Modelo SAB.  The U.S. Justice Department has expressed objections to the deal because the transaction would give AB InBev with almost half the U.S. market, therefore the Justice Department has threatened to sue, arguing that the proposed acquisition would violate antitrust law because it would eliminate the "substantial head-to-head competition" between AB InBev and Modelo and would "diminish the company's incentive to innovate."  Stay tuned for more!

Author P.S., March 17, 2013:  NPR's "All Things Considered" news program reports, in a story entitled "Craft Brews Slowly Chipping Away At Big Beer's Dominance", that although 90% of beer sold in the U.S. is from just 2 companies (Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors), innovators are challenging that dominance in the form of craft beer breweries. Small craft and regional breweries — now account for about 6% of domestic beer sales, which has been growing every year since the early 1990s, while big brewer share is declining.  That story can be viewed (or listened to) by visiting http://n.pr/111Ju1B.  However, it remains a challenge for craft brewers to get on eye-level store shelves.  NPR's Jacki Lyden, host of weekends on All Things Considered, said "Everyone wants to be on grocery store shelves at eye level," Flock says. "Craft brewers say big beer is increasingly pushing them out of those prime spots."

Author P.S., April 23, 2013:  NPR reports (see http://n.pr/14PW0Hs) that a federal court has approved a settlement agreement between the U.S. Department of Justice and Anheuser-Busch InBev that will allow the mammoth beer company to complete its purchase of Grupo Modelo, a Mexico-based brewer that produces Corona, Pacifico and other beers.  However, the deal requires AB InBev to sell ALL of Modelo's U.S. business, but it now clears the way for the $20.1 billion acquisition of the remaining portion of Modelo that AB InBev did not yet own.  Under the terms of the deal that were announced, Constellation, the company to whom Grupo Modelo will divest its U.S. holdings, will pay AB InBev $2.9 billion for control of the beer brands in the U.S., along with $1.85 billion for full control of Crown.

Author P.S., November 23, 2014:  The Wall Street Journal reports that sales of craft beer -- defined as beer made by independent breweries using traditional methods now surpass those of Budweiser. Slate does a good job of recapping the article HERE.

Author P.S., March 23, 2016: As this post notes, once upon a time, a lack of transportation and refrigeration meant that most beer sold in the U.S. was locally produced.  But with the advent of of that plus pasteurization, the beer industry had become largely nationalized.  But according to new data released by the Brewers Association, a trade organization representing small and independent American brewers based on data from several sources representing the beer industry over the years, there were 4,269 operating breweries in the country at the end of 2015, surpassing the previous record logged back in 1873, when breweries in the U.S. basically had to be local because refrigeration and pasteurization didn't exist at that time.  Big companies may still churn out more barrels, but small and independent breweries now comprise 99% of the total breweries in operation by count.  The trend now is because American consumers are rejecting bland, mediocrity for more flavorful brews that Americans once admired Europe for.  For Carlos Brito, industry consolidation (driven largely by AB Inbev and big competitors) hasn't stopped consumers from voting with their taste buds.  See http://bloom.bg/1SgcsWI for more details.

Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present?

I wasn't even going to do a holiday-themed post (after all, my "Grease" cast reunion album posting was sufficient, see that post at http://goo.gl/wcMA2), but I figured, it's Christmas so why not?  If you haven't already made a pilgrimage to PlaidStallions.com, be sure to do so.  There's lots of toys from the 1970s there, some you may have had and some maybe you were glad you didn't get from Santa.  Still, it's worth a visit!  By the way, if you've never visited any of the "Links I Like" found in the right margin of my blog, one particular may be worth looking at, namely the Sears Wishbooks of Christmases Past at http://wishbookweb.com/ which includes many old catalogs from Sears, as well as J.C. Penney (which looked a lot like Sears in those days), Montgomery Ward and a few others.

Last Christmas, Gael Fashingbauer Cooper who co-authored "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops?" (see my post about that at http://goo.gl/jAIF0) also blogs every so often at GenXTinct.com wrote about a website called BetamaXmas.com (http://betamaxmas.com/) which you might want to check out.  My readers may remember that the Sony Betamax, became the defunct rival VCR format to VHS ... of course, a few years from now, readers may ask what a VCR is/was, as if the DVR didn't have an analog predecessor!  Aside from a wood-paneled living room in the BetaMaxMas site, you can actually control the TV on this site, taking a look at different TV shows and commercials from the era of Gen X's youth, such as it was.

Anyway, in keeping with my "It's A Wonderful Life" theme of visiting ghosts of Christmases past, next I'd also like to suggest a visit to Christmas future (or is it Christmas present?).  Whatever it is, I discovered this cool YouTube video which hints that it's actually a Charlie Brown Christmas Reunion of sorts, and kind of what the Peanuts gang likely looks like now.  Check it out below, or by visiting http://youtu.be/R6pC03WRcE0:



I hope your holidays were great, and wish you a happy, healthy and prosperous 2013!

Pop Culture Reunion: "Grease" Film Co-Stars Collaborate on Charity Album

The year was 1977, and a young actor named John Travolta (who was already working as an actor on a sitcom called "Welcome Back, Kotter", see my post about that at http://goo.gl/Npe4p for details) had just landed a lead role in a film called "Saturday Night Fever", which had been one of the year's biggest blockbusters.  The following year, Mr. Travolta landed a role in another film that co-starred an upcoming Australian pop star named Olivia Newton-John in what was the first U.S. film version of the Broadway smash "Grease".  His "Saturday Night Fever" role earned the young actor an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor (although that year's Oscar for Best Actor went to Richard Dreyfuss for his role in "The Goodbye Girl").  Unlike "Grease", "Saturday Night Fever" was treated as a film for adults with an MPAA-unfriendly rating of "R" (Restricted), but "Grease" had a more family-friendly rating of "PG" which made it suitable to a much wider audience.

John Travolta was the hot actor (a role which seemed to belong to a young Zac Efron earlier this year) of the time, although Mr. Travolta would later appear in a string of films that bombed at the box office before resurrecting his moribund acting career in 1994 with a starring role in Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction".

But the world felt that Mr. Travolta and Ms. Newton-John had genuine on-screen chemistry, and few seemed to forget it.  While Mr. Travolta has had his share of recent issues, ranging from the tragic death of his son Jett, to multiple claims of gay sexual misconduct from male masseurs (although rumors about his sexuality have persisted since his days on "Welcome Back, Kotter"), it seems that the appetite for somehow resurrecting his role as Danny Zuko from "Grease" along with Olivia Newton-John resurrecting her role as Sandy Olsen in some way remains even after 34 years.  True, there was a poorly-received sequel to "Grease" called "Grease 2" that neither Mr. Travolta nor Ms. Newton-John appeared in, but the two have not really collaborated professionally in decades in spite of remaining close personal friends.

In 2012, the two (John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John) finally responded to fan requests for some type of reunion with a holiday-themed CD in which both sing Christmas music.

In fact, the "Grease" duet "You're the One That I Want" was a big reason this particular project came about.  Last Christmas, Olivia Newton-John texted John Travolta to tell him that the song had become the best-selling duet in pop music history.  The idea for the album came from there.  Mr. Travolta said in a statement, "From the moment we decided to do this, magic happened. Everyone we contacted agreed to do it."

"It just fell into place," said Olivia Newton-John.  "With our busy schedules, I don't know how we got it done. John and I have always connected. That's never gone away. When we're together, we have a good laugh and feel bonded to one another. We've been through some amazing experiences together."

The album, which actually bears John Travolta's name, is called "This Christmas" and the proceeds benefit each of their respective charities, the Olivia Newton-John Cancer & Wellness Center and the Jett Travolta Foundation.

Speaking about their concept for the album, Travolta said, "I wanted people to be able to play it around the house or in the car during the holidays, and make us part of your celebration. Gathering around house listening to Christmas music has always been an important part of that time of the year to my family."

While it's not quite another "Very Special Christmas" album, it does feature voices of some old favorites singing familiar Christmas carols.  In addition to the "Grease" co-stars, the album also features a number of other friends in vocals, including Cliff Richard, Chick Corea, Barbra Streisand, Kenny G, Tony Bennett, and James Taylor.  While this album is mainly covers of songs that most people know the words to from memory, the collaboration is seen by many as long overdue, and taken at face-value, offers a nice addition to holiday collections that are overflowing with artists who already receive lots of airplay.

The great news is that the album is presently selling for just $5.99 (as of December 21, 2012) on Amazon.com (see http://amzn.to/T0DbMh).

An NPR show called "The Takeaway" covered the album in an interview with Olivia Newton-John on December 14, 2012.  That program can be listened to below, or by visiting http://www.wnyc.org/story/257270-remixing-holidays-olivia-newton-john/:

Can Hit Music Be Manipulated By the Order a Track Appears on an Album?

In the days of analog music (tapes, which were preceded by vinyl albums), getting to a particular track on an album could be a real hassle.  In that regard, vinyl was actually superior to tapes which pretty much replaced vinyl (although no one could play vinyl records in their cars, hence the evolution of music formats away from vinyl to tapes) because someone could clearly see the breaks between songs, whereas tape listeners had to rely on counters built-into their cassette players, and those were not standardized so the listener had to find the start and end points for whichever tracks they wanted.  Using counters often required writing the counts down on the packages, combined with a time-consuming rewind or fast forward process.  Clearly, digital music had solved the problem of immediate access to only the tracks we wanted to listen to far better than any preceding technology.

But, as American Public Media's Marketplace reported on Monday, December 10, 2012, that a recent article published in Billboard magazine (see http://bit.ly/TobGJ5 for the Billboard article) suggests that the spot in which a track appears on an album seems to play a HUGE role in how many downloads of a given song will achieve and Billboard's Gary Trust wrote that the earlier a song appears on an album, the more likely it is to be listened to.  Have a listen to Marketplace interview below, or by visiting Marketplace at http://bit.ly/U53Hmq:


Contrary to what Marketplace suggests, Apple's iPod was NOT the invention to disrupt the idea that the order songs appear on an album has no significance on sales.  For the record, that distinction really belongs to the non-Apple software engineers from Fraunhofer IIS, University of Hannover, AT&T-Bell Labs, Thomson-Brandt, CCETT, and the others who actually invented the MP3 format which Apple was merely the first to successfully commercialize (well, Apple followed the lead of Napster which was merely filesharing which has since been displaced by Torrents and others, but convinced the music industry that this was their best way to sell music in the future).  Today, Apple's dominance in music faces growing competition (often based on much lower prices) from Amazon.com, Google and others who also sell digital music.

Billboard reports that the record labels (and artists, although how much influence the artists have remains to be seen) might want to revisit the importance of songs' locations on albums.

Billboard wrote "... Mumford & Sons' sophomore set 'Babel' which debuted atop the Billboard 200 (with 600,000 copies sold, according to Nielsen  SoundScan), 11 of the 12 cuts on its standard edition roared onto On-Demand Songs. More noticeably, the order of the songs on the album almost mirrors that in which they bowed on the subscription streaming tally that week.  Such data suggests that the earlier a song appears on an album, the more likely a listener is to stream it. At the same time, a music consumer's attention span may be even shorter than any artist wants to believe."

Record Label Beancounters Could Soon Dictate Track Order of Albums

Historically, as Billboard reported, "an album's track order has often been based on what has caught an artist's fancy, shaped by such elements as feel and flow, quoting country singer Taylor Swift who explained in the cover story of the October 27, 2012 issue of Billboard 'I never like to put two happy songs in a row or two of the same kind of sadness in a row'  explaining how she decided the order of cuts on her recent Billboard 200 chart-topper 'Red.'"

But we all know short consumer attention spans seem more prevalent today, and new technology has actually enabled consumers to utilize media in ways that better suit their needs, rather than the needs and wants of musicians or record label executives.

The concept that better-selling tracks tend to appear near the top of the list means that record labels (and artists) might (potentially) be able manipulate which songs become big hits and which ones become the throw-aways by virtue of WHERE a track is placed on an album.

Money Talks

Will the artists, divas and others allow this?

That may depend on who the artist is, but we all know when it comes to the entertainment business, money usually talks loudest and has the most influence.

Madonna Live Nation Contract As Precedent?

In 2007, Madonna dumped her long-time record label (Warner Music Group Corp's Sire Records) which helped make her a star for a plum deal worth about $120 million over 10 years according to a person who told Associated Press on condition of anonymity.  Key in the decision was that Warner Music refused to match the Live Nation deal, which encompassed future music and music-related businesses (Madonna was under contract to release one more album with Warner Music which she delivered), including the Madonna brand, albums, touring, merchandising, fanclub and Web site, DVDs, music-related television and film projects, and associated sponsorship agreements, the official statement said.

At the time, Madonna said in a statement that she was drawn to the deal with Live Nation because of the changes the music business has undergone in recent years.

"The paradigm in the music business has shifted and as an artist and a businesswoman, I have to move with that shift," Madonna said. "For the first time in my career, the way that my music can reach my fans is unlimited. I've never wanted to think in a limited way and with this new partnership, the possibilities are endless."

Madonna's business savvy aside, the good news is that albums aren't necessarily dead.

"The best lesson to take from studying albums' track sequences may be that even in an era of streaming, in which listener behavior seemingly reflects a tendency to sample only portions of releases, the album format appears to have a bright future," writes Billboard's Gary Trust.  He advises bands to put their best material up front -- where a public with an ever-shortening attention span might hear it.

Which songs become the biggest hits have potential to be manipulated in the future by factors like statistical modeling which could potentially dictate WHERE songs should be placed on a given album in order to maximize sales.  Just how much influence traditional radio responds remains to be seen, which had long effectively dominated music popularity, but today faces competition from nimble startups like Pandora radio.  Much of broadcast radio is increasingly corporatized anyway, with giants like Clear Channel snapping up local affiliates across the country, so they may be more than willing to play along.

The mere fact that radio remains in existence (in spite of its now old technology) proves that the radio industry has managed to evolve to stay relevant over time.  But, exactly WHAT radio plays may soon be dictated by things other than popular opinion (or maybe it has already?).

Christmas on TV and DVD

As long as there's been television in the U.S., Christmas TV programming has existed, too.  Whether it's specials, or episodes of our favorite shows, if it's been on, the chances are good there's some kind of holiday-themed episode, too.  In 2005, TVShowsonDVD's Barb Chabai wrote:

"Mix a few beloved characters, stir in chaotic forces of nature and add a story arc that ends with the cynic discovering the true meaning of Christmas - and you have all the trappings of a very special, eggnog-flavored holiday episode ... we could always count on our favorite shows to remind us that the spirit of the season was found not in the malls, not under the tree, but on cable."

No doubt, some networks including Antenna TV, RTV Retro Television and Me-TV and maybe even TV Land will be running some classic holiday-themed episodes, but many people will be busy celebrating the holidays with family, opening gifts, etc. so they could miss them.  So I thought this post was much better now than a few weeks from today. DVD is a good option since you can watch before the holidays, but where does one start?

There are a few books, including "Christmas on Television (The Praeger Television Collection)" by Diane Werts, and there's also another book titled "Tis the Season TV: The Encyclopedia of Christmas-Themed Episodes, Specials and Made-for-TV Movies" by Joanna Wilson.  Neither is quite the definitive encyclopedia on the subject, but they're good places to start.  As best I can tell, both are available in Kindle editions, too, so instant gratification can be combined with streaming video for almost instant gratification provided you're willing to pay for it.


But there have also been a few collections of holiday TV on DVD, including Paramount's "Holiday Treats" which had holiday episodes for "I Love Lucy". "The Honeymooners", "The Andy Griffith Show", "The Brady Bunch", "Taxi" and "Family Ties".  There’s a companion set called "Christmas Treats” which includes episodes from "Happy Days", "Laverne & Shirley", and "Mork and Mindy" just to name a few.  Finally, they sell a 2-disc collection containing all of these and a few more episodes I haven’t named.

Shout Factory's "Merry Sitcom" is another collection which has holiday episodes for "Bewitched" and "That Girl" and "The Flying Nun" as well as some older ones including "McHale's Navy", "The Donna Reed Show" and "Father Knows Best".

However, what I believe is the best of the bunch is Warner Archive's "Classic TV Christmas", which is a nice, 4-disc collection which features "Alice", "Eight is Enough" (a 2-part episode, no less), "Welcome Back Kotter:, "CHiPs", "Mama's Family" and some newer sitcoms including "Suddenly Susan" and "Veronica's Closet" as well as a few others.

Collectively, these compilations are good ones to have, although some people prefer having their whole favorite series' for their favorite shows.  Personally, I have a rather extensive TV on DVD collection, but finding those holiday-themed episodes among boxes of discs is sometimes challenging.

TVShowsonDVD has a good resource online with all the Christmas-themed episodes listed by show, which now number 354 episodes as I write this (December 2012).

To see it, visit: http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/christmas.cfm.

It isn't quite as comprehensive as it could be -- for example, they list the series and season, but not the discs those episodes are found on, nor the name of the holiday-themed episodes, but it's a good place to start.

Absolutely Fabulous, Series #5

All in the Family, The Complete 2nd Season

All in the Family, The Complete 4th Season

Bewitched, The Complete 1st Season: Original Black & White Edition

The Brady Bunch, The Complete 1st Season

Diff'rent Strokes, The Complete 1st Season

The Golden Girls, Season 2

The Golden Girls, Season 5

Green Acres, Season 2

Growing Pains, The Complete 1st Season

The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Complete 1st Season

MadTV, The Complete 1st Season

Moonlighting, Seasons 1 and 2

Nip/Tuck, The Complete 3rd Season (Operating Room Packaging)

Pee-wee's Playhouse Christmas Special

Smallville, The Complete 5th Season

Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, The Christmas Collection

That Girl, Season 1

That Girl, Season 2

Three's Company, Season 2

Who's the Boss?, The Complete 1st Season

Night Court, Complete 1st Season

So there you have my selections.  I'm sharing them now so you can dig them up, order them or assemble your own collection.  Someday, I'll upload my collection someplace on the cloud and be able to create playlists of TV show episodes, but until then, you can simply get your discs out and watch the relevant episodes.

Seasons Greetings!

Television As A Shared Cultural Experience

I've written on a number of occasions so far that with the advent of digital television, DVRs and television on-demand, streaming video and a choice of hundreds of cable channels in an average household (for example, see my posts HERE and HERE and HERE for a few examples) that something is kind of lost with the lack of a shared TV experience.

It was much easier in the past when everyone got the same 3 or 4 television networks, so we weren't overwhelmed with choices.  If you didn't like what was on one of those stations, the alternative was to do something else (like listen to the radio, or read a book or magazine, of course printed books and magazines may someday be on the endangered species list, as Newsweek announced it is converting to an all-digital format starting next year, see http://goo.gl/lZ6mr).

In Time magazine (see http://ti.me/mG2aM), Steve Gillon, author of "Boomer Nation: The Largest and Richest Generation Ever, and How It Changed America," argued [I would add rather unconvincingly] that Baby Boomers (people born between 1946 and 1964) were the last [emphasis mine] generation to really experience national culture in such a unified way.  He told Time "If you grew up in the '50s and '60s, you came of age at the same time that national culture first developed.  There were three major TV networks. Everyone was watching the same thing. The assassination of J.F.K., for instance, was the first event the nation experienced in real time at the same time."

Maybe, but Boomers weren't the first (or last) ones to experience that at the same time.  Gen X even has historical events to prove it.

For example, on January 28, 1986, when Space Shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after takeoff, it was primarily Gen Xers who were tuned in at school, not Baby Boomers.  Less anyone forget,  New Hampshire schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe was on board, so many schools were showing the takeoff on televisions in classrooms across the country.

Cable as we know it today didn't become widespread until the 1980s.  Many small towns in America weren't even wired for cable until the 1980s. (I provided some stats that cable subscriptions more than tripled from 15 million in 1980 to 47 million in 1989 in my post on "Family Ties", see http://goo.gl/DRmhw for that), so Gen Xers weren't "wired at birth" as Mr. Gillon seems to be suggesting.  In fact, by then, Gen X was already graduating from high school.

And, that "national culture" was not a product of the Baby Boom, but of the so-called Silent Generation (born 1925-1945, recognized as the children of the Great Depression who arguably created network TV as we knew it).  A "national culture" already existed by the time Baby Boomers (and Gen X) came along.  I kind of presumed that Gen X might be the last generation to experience that.

Social Media Helps Save A Shared TV Experience

It turns out I was wrong.  Watching TV together isn't dead after all, it's merely changed form.

True, entire households may not necessarily watch a TV show together, but thanks to social media like Facebook and Twitter, a new era of shared pop culture moments via television are still alive and kicking!

NPR News Morning Edition today had a really interesting story entitled "Nielsen Study Notices Growth In Social TV" in which NPR reporter Renee Montagne talked to Dierdre Bannon of Nielsen about its new report on social media use (see that report at http://bit.ly/11wycnB), and one of its key findings: explosive growth in "Social TV", which is people watching television while connected to social media.  Have a listen to that below, or by visiting http://n.pr/Xm08ui:


I can say that I've watched television while Tweeting, and it does make the experience more fun than watching something by yourself.  As the report shows, Twitter rules in that space, not Facebook. The report shows that during June 2012, a third of active Twitter users tweeted about TV-related content, an increase of 27% from the beginning of the year.  Dierdre Bannon of Nielsen noted that Twitter is particularly well suited for that type of social interaction.  And although I've read some bloggers who obsess that it's youth who are glued to social media, as it turns out, adults aged 35-44 are the most likely to discuss TV programming with their social connections, not younger folks.  Too bad, they don't know what they're missing, but I guess if I was still in my 20s, I'd probably find going to bars more fun, too!  Maybe they'll figure it out ... someday.

Social media does have advantages over the traditional "shared" TV watching experience.  For example, you can share the experience with a much larger group of people, and they need not be in the same room or, theoretically, even the same country!  On the downside, there is something to be said about laughing at something together with people in the same room and being able to see the expressions on their faces.  But, compared to the alternative scenario of everyone watching their own show on their own tablets or phone, the shared enjoyment factor suggest that communal television rightfully deserves to continue.

The television networks are keenly aware that people are Tweeting about a show as it airs live.  These days, we see hashtags being promoted in program intros and during commercials.  Contest-oriented shows like American Idol and The Voice use them all the time to gather votes for contestants.

In the NPR interview, Ms. Brannon says:

"And you see that television networks are responding and recognizing to this as well. And people are really gaining a voice in how they feel about the programming content that they're seeing and having an influence on what they're seeing on the screen."

Having said that, the networks aren't exactly using this social feedback to alter storylines.  That, at least presently, is still controlled by the networks' anointed gatekeepers.  In fact, Fast Company wrote back in October (see http://bit.ly/TiMHUs for the article):

"The X Factor realized that its highly enthusiastic following on Twitter had strong opinions about the show’s contestants. The show’s executives got in touch with Digital Royalty, and we helped them see that their viewers didn’t necessarily care if the TV show itself was listening to their opinion; they were naturally sharing their thoughts, feelings, likes, and dislikes with their peers in the interest of a more personal viewing experience."

My local NPR station, WNYC, has a program called "On The Media" and in a show that ran on May 25, 2012 which they named "Television's Trying Times", a segment of that program called "Will We Ever Watch TV Together Again?" aired.  In that segment, guests David Carr (media critic at the New York Times) and Matt Zoller Seitz, (New York magazine's TV critic) discussed "social viewing" of TV.  Mr. Zoller Seitz suggested social viewing doesn't change the long-term trends.  You may listen to that segment below, or by visiting http://www.wnyc.org/story/212464-televisions-trying-times/:


Perhaps expecting the social television experience to enable viewers to somehow be involved in key decisions is too much to expect.  But I'm psyched that shared, live TV viewing has found a new way to survive in the new Millennium!