10/28/2025
59 Years Ago Today!
It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown Premiered in America on CBS Oct 27 1966
The initial broadcast of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown was on CBC Television in Canada on October 26, 1966. It was then broadcast on CBS October 27, 1966, preempting My Three Sons, and tied Bonanza as the No. 1 broadcast in that week's Nielsen TV ratings. The show aired against Star Trek on NBC and The Dating Game on ABC, earning 49% of the total market share with 17.3 million viewers. After its success, CBS rebroadcast the program each year. It moved to ABC in 2001, where it continued to broadcast annually.
It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is a 1966 American animated Halloween television special based on the comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz. The third Peanuts special, and the second holiday-themed special, to be created, it was written by Schulz along with director/animator Bill Melendez and producer Lee Mendelson. The cast included Peter Robbins as Charlie Brown, Christopher Shea as Linus Van Pelt, Sally Dryer as Lucy Van Pelt, and Melendez as Snoopy. The special features music composed by jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi, whose contributions include the theme song "Linus and Lucy". It aired on broadcast television every year from its debut in 1966 until 2020 when it became an Apple TV+ exclusive.
It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown follows the children of the Peanuts comics as they celebrate Halloween, while Linus forgoes celebrations to wait in a pumpkin patch for the mythical Great Pumpkin. The sequence following Snoopy as a World War I flying ace and its depiction of Lucy pulling a football away from Charlie Brown have both become widely recognized in pop culture. The program was highly successful, watched by 49% of American television viewers in its debut broadcast. It received widespread critical acclaim, particularly for its artistic style and music score, and it is often regarded as the best of the Peanuts television specials. The success of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown led to the development of the Halloween special as a television genre.