1) “The Year: 2024,” 9-11 p.m., ABC. It’s been a strange year, ending with an overthrow in Syria (after 13 years of civil war) and a near-shutdown in the U.S. But this ABC News special will also leave room for pop culture. It includes Olympians, politicians, Elton John, Teddy Swims (shown here), Shaboozey, Lara Trump, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Charlamagne the God and more.
2) “NBC’s Hot 10,” 8 p.m., NBC. Here’s another year-end special, this one produced by E, a pop culture channel. It’s followed by “Dolly Parton’s Mountain Magic Christmas,” a 2022 special that mixes clumsy scripted material with terrific music. It includes Parton, her sisters, Willie Nelson, Jimmie Alley, Billy Ray Cyrus, Miley Cyrus and more.
3) “Ghosts,” 8-10 p.m., CBS. The two most-recent Christmas tales – each a clever two-parter – rerun. First, Jay’s sister visits and brings a guy … setting off holiday-romance schemes. Then she’s back, with their parents. Some body-switching follows – often funny, sometimes emotional.
4) Football. After a one-day pause, the bowl blizzard returns. ESPN has games at 2 p.m. ET (Pittsburgh-Toledo), 5 p.m. (Rutgers-Kansas State) and 8 p.m. (Bowling Green-Arkansas State).
5) ALSO. With Christmas movies gone (mostly), there’s room for other choices. Some are quite new – a second “Squid Game” season on Netflix, “Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice” at 8 p.m. on HBO – and some are old: At 6 a.m. ET, Turner Classic Movies starts a string of 15 movies (from 1937-46) with Mickey Rooney as Andy Hardy.
— Mike Hughes, TV America