Here’s a look at what media of interest is kicking off the new year, for January 2025.
Movies
- Dog Man, Jan. 31
DVDs/Blu-rays
A full list of January releases is available here.
- Daffy Duck’s Quackbusters (Blu-ray), on sale Jan. 28
- Frankenstein Jr. and the Impossibles (Blu-ray), on sale Jan. 28
Disney+
A full list is available here.
- Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Jan. 29
Sports
- NHL Winter Classic (Chicago Blackhawks vs. St. Louis Blues), December 31, 2 PM PT/5 PM ET (TNT)
- NFL football playoffs (various channels)
Other
- 2025 Rose Parade, Jan. 1, 8 AM PT/11 AM ET (ABC, NBC, Peacock, Univision (in Spanish); KTLA (Los Angeles); also streaming on Pluto TV)
My thoughts
The annual Rose Parade will air on its usual broadcasters. For some reason, it’s also airing on Great American Family, the Hallmark-knockoff cable channel started by people mad about Hallmark airing more films featuring same-sex couples.
A new Spider-Man series, “Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man,” launches on Disney+. While “Spidey and His Amazing Friends” is one of Disney+’s most popular series, it’s also aimed at preschoolers. “Friendly” is a more conventional superhero cartoon, apparently with loose ties to the MCU via the multiverse?
Warner Archive, Warner Bros.’s specialty home video service (and oddly one of the few things David Zaslav hasn’t gutted for the equivalent of pocket change), is releasing a few cartoons to Blu-ray for the first time. Coming out in January are the late 80s Looney Tunes compilation movie “Daffy Duck’s Quackbusters” and the mid-60s Hanna-Barbera cartoon “Frankenstein Jr. and the Impossibles.”
Sports stuff
This year’s NHL Winter Classic is airing for the first time on New Year’s Eve, rather than New Year’s Day. (Despite technically still being 2024, it’s still labeled as the “2025 Winter Classic.”) The reason for the move appears to be to combat declining ratings for the outdoor game, something not helped by the game moving to cable (cord cutting and all?). That said, I’m not sure it’ll help that the Blackhawks are (unfortunately) as of this writing one of the worst teams in the league (ranking #30 out of 32 teams). The Blues are doing better, but not exactly top-ranked either.
“Rose Parade 2017” by Prayitno / Thank you for (12 millions +) view is licensed under CC BY 2.0. (Flickr / cropped from original)
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