{"id":206583,"date":"2025-12-23T09:35:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T09:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/206583\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T09:35:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T09:35:09","slug":"pat-stacey-was-christmas-day-tv-really-better-20-years-ago-than-it-is-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/206583\/","title":{"rendered":"Pat Stacey: Was Christmas Day TV really better 20 years ago than it is now?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">Nostalgia can make us look at the TV of the past with a rose-tinted lens that doesn\u2019t always match reality. Here\u2019s what we were watching in 2005\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"The Doctor (David Tennant), Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) and a member of alien race the Sycorax in a scene from the 2005 \u2018Doctor Who\u2019 Christmas special. Photo: BBC\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ifwho christmas.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">The Doctor (David Tennant), Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) and a member of alien race the Sycorax in a scene from the 2005 \u2018Doctor Who\u2019 Christmas special. Photo: BBC<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">When people of a certain age say Christmas television used to be better years ago, they\u2019re usually talking about the supposed glory days of the 1970s \u2013 which, on closer inspection, weren\u2019t actually that glorious at all.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">But what was it like 20 years ago, the last flourish of terrestrial TV before Neflix, as we know it today, changed everything? Here\u2019s what the main channels were serving up with the turkey on Christmas Day, 2005.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nostalgia can make us look at the TV of the past with a rose-tinted lens that doesn\u2019t always&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1578,93,61,60,9617,6085,3476],"class_list":["post-206583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-bbc","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-pat-stacey","tag-rte","tag-virgin-media-television"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}