Christmas Commercials 2016

You might be wondering where this post has been all this time. Surely, now that I’m updating this blog on a more regular basis, I should have seen all I needed to regarding all the shows I watch and the Christmas commercials that have aired with them before the start of Advent, right? Well, there was just one tape of stuff that I share with someone else and we never had time to get caught up on it until very recently. That was one of the major changes regarding this TV season. I hope to never have this particular post this late again, but I can’t make any promises. Anyways, let’s get to the post at hand that I do every year.

Well, Kmart is at it again. They aired an early Christmas commercial. At least they waited until after October started this year. But they earn my annual Christmas boycott as they have every year except last one when Best Buy took the spot. So here I am hoping that at least the terrible onslaught of Christmas commercials can be held back until after all the stupid political commercials have stopped. As much as I hate Citizens United, let’s just stick to the number of Christmas commercials that aired this year. As always, I remind you of counts from previous years.

In 2012, the official count of Christmas commercials before October was 0. The official count before Halloween was 27. The official count before the Sunday after Thanksgiving was 200. In 2013, the official count of Christmas commercials before October was 5. The official count before Halloween was 30. The official count before the Sunday after Thanksgiving was 600. In 2014, the official count of Christmas commercials before October was 3. The official count before Halloween was 26. The official count before the Sunday after Thanksgiving was 700. In 2015, the official count of Christmas commercials before October was 0. The official count before Halloween was 13. The official count before the Sunday after Thanksgiving was 530.

Christmas overrun for 2014-2015 is 28 commercials. Christmas overrun for 2015-2016 is 14 commercials. Christmas overrun means that after Christmas and in a bit of January, you will see Christmas commercials of some type. I’m keeping track of them, although they will always be separate from the main list.

I noticed in August that there were Holiday bonus points commercials that aired from Nissan. There were 12 of them to be precise. While I’m not sure if they actually count (mostly because there was enough in it that refuted the whole link to being an actual holiday commercial), I still think that I will include them in this separate count from the actual list.

In 2016, the official count of Christmas commercials before October was 0. The official count before Halloween was 45. In 2016, the official count before the Sunday after Thanksgiving was 386. After finally getting caught up on all the tapes, this is the final count that I have.

Christmas overrun for 2016-2017 is 55. As you can see, this is the highest of this count that I have yet recorded as it seemed like from after Christmas early into January, there was a lot of them still airing on all that I watched.

A lot of the changes this year as compared to other years probably relates to a presidential election happening. Maybe that’s why the Christmas overrun was as high as it has ever been. But the pre Halloween commercial count was also the highest this year, which seems strange since all the political commercials would have been before the November transition. The overall pre Christmas season count was low compared to other years. I guess that we will see for sure what could change with this in future years. But will there be new highs? Maybe I should track the highest each year.