It won’t roast chestnuts, but the TV log catches fire

This is the year Kevin Tietjen, a New York City native living in Connecticut, plans to introduce his 5-year-old son to a Christmas tradition from his childhood: opening presents in the glow of a crackling fire beamed into homes by television station WPIX.

“You turned this thing on, they had Christmas carols playing in the background,” remembers Tietjen, 38, a risk consultant in New York. “And because we didn’t have a fireplace, the whole concept of the Yule Log was pretty cool.”

The televised Yule Log, a recurring seven-minute video that debuted on the station in 1966, is gaining renewed popularity since returning to the air in 2001 after a 10-year hiatus. Last year’s four-hour broadcast drew a bigger audience than WNBC’s Christmas Mass at Washington National Cathedral, according to New York-based Nielsen Media Research.

Success has spawned knockoffs. More than half a dozen DVD imitators, such as “The Happy Holiday Hearth,” are sold on Amazon.com. In Demand Networks, a high-definition cable broadcaster, will air an eight-hour broadcast of a digitally enhanced fireplace on its INHD2 network.

Other TV stations around the country are following suit, including KCAL-TV Channel 9 in Southern California, which will be burning the log from 6 to 10 a.m. Sunday.

WPIX brought back the log after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that leveled the World Trade Center in Manhattan, says Bob Marra, the station’s director of sales.

“We said, ‘What can we do to get people feeling good about themselves?’ ” Marra says. “It’s all about tradition.”

The biggest issue for In Demand was the music backing the burning log. The network switched to orchestral arrangements of Christmas carols last year after using synthesizer music during the Yule Log’s debut in 2003, says Jason Patton, vice president of business development.

“There is a passionate group of Yule Log fans, and on Dec. 25, 2003, we got all sorts of comments on Internet message boards saying, ‘I loved the Yule Log, but the music [was terrible],’ ” he says. Of WPIX’s broadcast, Patton says, “They are the most famous, but we think we have the best.”

While hypnotic TV isn’t limited to burning fireplaces -- Amazon.com sells DVDs of fish tanks, waves crashing on beaches and snow falling -- the Yule Log holds a special place for viewers such as Robert Thompson, popular culture professor at Syracuse University in Syracuse, N.Y.

“There are a lot of people who grew up in New York City who don’t recall a world without the Yule Log on their TV set at Christmas,” says Thompson, who taped the show with his first VCR in the 1980s. “There’s something as ancient about it as an actual log in a fireplace. I find it extraordinarily soothing.”

Christmas television viewing tends to be lower than on other days, according to data from Nielsen Media Research. About 50.7 million people watched TV in the U.S. on Dec. 25, about 7% fewer viewers than on a typical day.

Although holiday staffing at WPIX is lighter than usual, “if anything, the log requires extra care and attention on Christmas morning,” O’Neil says. The station prepares multiple backup tapes in case of problems, she says.

“Maybe the allure of the Yule Log is that it’s not overproduced,” Tietjen says. “If they could figure out a way to throw off heat, it’d be perfect.”