A Very Sparkly Broadcast Battle

Greetings, humans, elves, and those undecided! It is I, Elrondo Sparklebeard, here to sprinkle some festive wisdom across your mortal screens. Yes—screens, plural. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned this year, it’s that the modern world has far too many ways to watch things and none of them show enough elves.

Christmas approaches, which means two things:

1. We at the Elf Liberation Front start sharpening our candy canes for the annual Workplace Negotiations with Santa.

2. You all start arguing about what to watch.

And oh, what a battlefield it is.

In my youth (circa the Age of Glitter, roughly 1,200 years ago), your human world had only terrestrial television. You turned on a box, accepted what it gave you, and were grateful if the picture wasn’t so fuzzy that all characters resembled yetis wearing woolly hats. But now? Now you have streaming—a digital buffet of infinite fantasy worlds, available instantly, except for when it buffers at the exact moment someone important is about to swing a sword, kiss their true love, or reveal that they were secretly a dragon all along.

(Dragons always steal the dramatic moments. Typical.)

But the real problem—and this is where things get festive—is that the streaming giants are taking up all the space that terrestrial TV once used for classic holiday fantasy films. The old channels used to run them on repeat, like a yuletide mantra:

• The Wizard Who Forgot Tuesday

• The Snow Knight and the Slightly Evil Goose

• The Adventures of Holly the Overworked Elf (loosely based on true events)

These days, terrestrial TV seems to shrug and say, “We’ve got a documentary about turnips, will that do?”

Meanwhile, the streamers hoard all the magical films like dragons hoard treasure. They scatter them across platforms like confetti, so you need seventeen subscriptions, three passwords, and a minor enchantment just to locate the one movie you watch every December out of pure nostalgic obligation. (Don’t pretend you don’t have one. Mine is Mittens Saves the North Pole Again—a deeply moving film about a cat with a candy-cane-based martial arts skillset.)

And what about fantasy series? The streamers are churning them out faster than Santa produces unpaid internships. Every week there’s a new tale featuring epic quests, reluctant heroes, maps with curly writing, and brooding figures staring off cliffs like it’s mandatory for insurance purposes.

Honestly, terrestrial TV can’t keep up. Their idea of “fantasy” is still “a man in a rubber suit pretending to be a troll in a BBC quarry.”

But here’s my festive observation:Despite the chaos—despite the endless options, the too-many remotes, and the fact that your nan keeps mixing up Netflix with the toaster—you humans now have more fantasy on screen than ever.

Elves approve. Strongly.

So this Christmas, whether you stream your saga in high definition or stumble across a forgotten fantasy film on Channel 57 at 2 a.m., embrace the magic. Share it. Celebrate it. And maybe—just maybe—write to your local broadcasters and ask for a little more elf representation.

Go on. Do it for Sparklebeard.

Coming This Friday:🎄 2. “Why Every Channel Needs a ‘24-Hour Elf Cam’ This Christmas”

Until next time—may your batteries be charged, your Wi-Fi stable, and your holiday snacks plentiful.

Elrondo out.

By Elrondo Sparklebeard, Supreme Spokeself of the Elf Liberation Front, Chief Social Media Whizz at Inklberries, and Long-Suffering Manager of Santa’s Content Calendar