Whatever Happened to Watching the Same Television?
There was once a point in the run-up to Christmas when an unusually thick television guide would appear in the house and suddenly the festive period could be planned properly. You would flick through the pages, circle the films and Christmas specials you wanted to watch, discover two things you desperately wanted to see were on at exactly the same time and begin negotiating with the rest of the family over which side would win control of the television.
Halloween had its own smaller version of the ritual. You would scan the listings looking for horror films, late-night specials and whatever slightly inappropriate movie the broadcasters had decided could safely start once the children were supposed to be in bed. Christmas was the main event, though. The arrival of the bumper TV guide felt almost like part of Christmas itself.
The Radio Times Christmas issue remains a fixture today and has been part of British broadcasting culture for generations. Its 2025 edition still contained a full fourteen days of television listings covering Christmas and New Year, although tellingly the modern guide now has to navigate streaming, podcasts and on-demand entertainment alongside traditional television.
The guide survived. Something about the experience around it has changed.
Television used to create an appointment
Before catch-up television and streaming, missing something actually meant missing it. Perhaps somebody had remembered to programme the video recorder, but otherwise the programme was happening at eight o'clock and you were either in front of the television at eight o'clock or you were hearing everybody talk about it the following morning.
That restriction could be annoying, but it also created a strange kind of shared experience. Millions of people watched the same Christmas special, sitcom or film within the same couple of hours. Families argued over what went on after dinner because there really was a decision to make. Even complaining that there was “nothing on this Christmas” was something we apparently enjoyed doing together.
As far back as the beginning of digital television, commentators wondered whether expanding choice would eventually destroy television as a shared cultural experience. The prediction was understandable: once everyone could choose their own entertainment whenever they wanted, there was much less reason for the nation to sit down at the same time.
Streaming has largely delivered that future.
Everything is available, but nothing feels quite as special
Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, iPlayer and the rest have made television immeasurably more convenient. We no longer need to arrange Christmas Day around a programme because it will probably still be there tomorrow. If somebody wants to watch a film while everyone else watches a Christmas special, there is another television, tablet or phone somewhere nearby.
It is objectively more flexible, but flexibility has taken something away from the sense of occasion.
Scrolling through a streaming menu does not feel quite the same as opening a Christmas TV guide and discovering that a favourite film is finally being shown. A film being available every day of the year is useful, but seeing that it was on BBC One at 3:15 on Christmas afternoon somehow made exactly the same film feel like part of Christmas.
That may sound ridiculously nostalgic, because nothing is stopping us from watching together now. The difference is that television no longer forces us to.
We don't even have to agree anymore
Perhaps that is the real change.
The old Christmas television experience involved compromise. One person wanted the film, somebody else wanted the soap and another member of the family insisted on watching the Christmas special everyone else had already decided looked terrible. Eventually someone won, everyone remained in the same room and half the family probably fell asleep before it finished.
Streaming removes most of that friction. Everyone can watch exactly what they want, exactly when they want it, often on completely different screens. From an individual viewer's perspective, that is brilliant. From a family or cultural perspective, it can make television feel slightly less communal.
Interestingly, that attachment to shared Christmas viewing survived well into the streaming era. A Radio Times survey in 2017 found that 62% of its respondents still preferred live television on Christmas Day and 85% said they watched television together as a family. That survey is now nearly a decade old and cannot tell us how people behave in 2026, but it shows how stubborn the tradition remained even after on-demand viewing had become commonplace.
Perhaps the magic was never really the television
Christmas television is not disappearing. Broadcasters will still fill December with specials, films and programmes designed to be watched with far too much food nearby, while streaming services produce their own festive releases.
What may be disappearing is the anticipation.
It was the television guide appearing on the coffee table. It was finding something you had forgotten existed. It was putting a circle around Christmas Eve, then realising somebody else had already circled something on the other channel. It was knowing that millions of other households were probably watching exactly the same programme at exactly the same moment.
Streaming gave us almost unlimited choice, and few of us would genuinely want to surrender that convenience.
But as Halloween approaches and the Christmas schedules begin appearing again, there is still something appealing about the idea of turning a page, picking a programme and knowing that, for a couple of hours at least, everybody is watching the same television again.
