Best Christmas Ever is a seasonal program block on AMC, an American cable and satellite network. The block, launched in 2018, airs Christmas-themed television specials and feature films from late November through December. Its primary direct competition is the more established 25 Days of Christmas on Freeform, on which much of the same programming had previously aired prior to 2018. The two blocks continue to share rights to three films, with each network getting a window to air each film: the 1994 remake of Miracle on 34th Street, Mrs. Doubtfire and Love the Coopers. In contrast to 25 Days of Christmas, Best Christmas Ever airs no original programming, relying entirely on reruns.
History
AMC had typically aired a rotating lineup of five to six Christmas movies during the holiday season. In 2018, the channel introduced a more extensive holiday lineup branded as Best Christmas Ever, running from November 26 to December 25, featuring a mix of popular Christmas and family films, along with other acquired specials. The schedule included notable acquisitions from Warner Bros., including Elf, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, The Polar Express, and 12 Rankin/Bass specials. The films had been recent mainstays of the 25 Days of Christmas schedule, with Elf in particular having received extensive airplay and high viewership during the event. Other programs included specials from DreamWorks Animation. As expected, AMC saw ratings gains over the holiday season; primetime viewership for the first two weeks of the event was up 40% year-over-year, airings of Elf and Christmas Vacation both peaked at 1.5 million viewers, and average viewership of feature films on Freeform fell by 36% year-over-year in the same period. In 2019, Freeform responded to the loss of most of the Rankin/Bass library by acquiring cable rights to the two remaining specials from that company that had never been aired on cable: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman, sharing the rights with those two specials' longtime free-to-air rightsholder, CBS.
