Although I only have vague memories of the XMas special I saw him on, I do remember thinking he was funny. Much funnier than a lot of those corny XMas specials they used to have like Perry Como, Andy Williams and (gasp) The King Family. I still like to watch old bw movies and shows. TVLand and MeTV are my channels for that and TCM for movies. And yes, I have to agree with you on the current state of TV. It reminds me of nice tall, ice cold glass of empty!

That's an apt metaphor to describe commercial TV which has standards
so low they've limboed their way to the worms eye view for their sheeple.
Things are always looking up from the worm's eye view. I prefer the bird's
eye view. I dig your taste in TCM. It's one of my fave channels too. The
first thing I do is to preview their lineup for 2 weeks out, and set my timers
to DVR their classic movies for my archival hard drive. What Encore Westerns
doesn't feature, TCM picks up the slack. My objective is to archive every
quality Western movie ever filmed from 1938-2008. All the Westerns that
Gary Cooper, Jimmy Stewart, Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, Tim Holt, Errol
Flynn, Clint Walker, Audie Murphy, John Wayne, Burt Lancaster, et al , ever
starred in. So far I've collected about 60-75% of them. Seeing technicolor
Westerns from the 1930s, 40s, 50s is realy a treat. Anyone who wanted to
make it in movies made a Western in those days when TV either didn't exist,
or was so barely initialized, it didn't have a chance to corrupt American culture.

To each his own about TV Land. I appreciate the concept, but they realy
should branch out with a TV Land Classic channel, you know ? There are
sooooooooo many popular B & W TV shows from the 1950s & 1960s that
baby boomers would relish seeing, yet aren't aired because of ignorance.
Encore Westerns channel plays the longest running TV series from that era.
But except for the Gene Autry B movies even it doesn't play the real hard
core TV series like Dish channel # 264 does. I thought I died and went to
heaven when I saw the Lone Ranger, the Roy Rogers show, Sgt. Preston
on their lineup. It's encouraging that it features a lot of kids oriented shorts,
music videos et al series, as well as the realy old pioneering stuff. It shows
they want it to be a genuine family favorite channel in more than name only.
The short public health adverts featured on it called Janet's Planet are
openly child oriented, but very intelligently formatted to make it non boring
for adults ( and grandparents ) to watch with their kids. The concept of 57
channels and nothing on is bullshit. It means we could use 570 channels
to obtain a selection improved by a factor of X 10. It can't be true full
spectrum A/V unless & until every good thing is represented. I don't use
this word as a cliche' but perhaps the most awesome TV channel I ever
witnessed was the Lime channel out of Australia. It was truely an enlightened
network.