• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, July 3, 2025

Other holidays get a big hug and a kiss from TV, but not the one that celebrates the birth of our nation.

Not only does the day commemorate the ratification of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, but the national holiday known as July Fourth is America’s premiere national party day.

Everywhere you go on the Fourth of July, you will find a country united in good feelings as Americans take up the opportunity to honor the great U.S. of A by getting together for summer fun with family and friends.

But not on TV, which strikes me as a missed opportunity. By contrast, other holidays get big love from TV -- mainly, Halloween and then Christmas, which encompasses the whole December holiday season up to and including New Year’s Eve.

But July Fourth? Sorry, America, we’ll take a pass, says television. But during those other holiday seasons, you cannot avoid the holiday shows.

In the weeks leading up to Halloween, TV gorges on Halloween baking competitions, takes us on visits to haunted houses, and celebrates homeowners who put on the nation’s most garish displays of Halloween decorations. 

Halloween is the season for talk-show hosts donning elaborate costumes and scores of Halloween episodes on scripted sitcoms. But in the weeks before July Fourth? Crickets.

Halloween is one thing. But Christmas? Has anyone ever calculated how much the TV biz spends on Christmas-holiday programming?

The list includes Christmas-themed episodes of every sitcom on TV, vintage animated specials, every theatrical Christmas movie ever made, cooking and baking competitions, concert specials, Christmas decoration contests, and dozens upon dozens of made-for-TV Christmas movies.

Hallmark and Lifetime are the best-known producers and providers of the latter, but July Fourth TV-movie marathons? I’ve never heard of them.

While you will see not a single made-for-TV Fourth of July movie on the Fourth or any other date adjacent to the holiday, Hallmark starts its annual, summer series of Christmas movies this Saturday, July 5.

Hallmark positions this marathon event as “Christmas In July.” Hey, Hallmark, how about “July Fourth In July”?

The TV Blog acknowledges that there is at least some content on TV around July Fourth, but compared to Halloween and Christmas, it amounts to very little. 

PBS has its annual “Capitol Fourth” special of music and fireworks from Washington on the Fourth. 

And TCM shows a couple of Independence Day-related old movies on July Fourth evening. This year, it’s Yankee Doodle Dandy” followed by “1776.”

The TV Blog is also aware that network series -- especially sitcoms -- do not produce new episodes for the summer, so it could be said that Halloween and Christmas share the luxury of falling within the traditional fall-to-spring TV season, while July Fourth does not.

But legacy networks are only a fraction of the TV-content world today. The concept of “seasons” is not traditional today either. Nowadays, they begin and end at any ol’ time.

Surely, some scripted shows and music specials could be produced to line up with this iconic national holiday.

Today, we are living in a period of renewed national patriotism and pride. We are even seeing commercials now touting brands that are Made in America, most notably automobiles.

The time is now ripe for the Fourth of July to take its rightful place in the pantheon of TV holiday celebrations.  

Photo credit: “Sesame Street” Fourth of July episode, Season 50, Episode 35, courtesy Warner Bros. Discovery.