CBS Thursday Night Movie was the network's venture into the weekly televising of then-recent theatrical films, debuting at the start of the 1965–1966 season , from 9:00 to 11 p.m. (Eastern Time). Unlike its two competitors ( NBC and ABC ), CBS had delayed running feature films at the behest of the network's hierarchy. Indeed, as far back as 1960, when Paramount Pictures offered a huge backlog of titles for sale to television for $ 50 million, James T. Aubrey , program director at CBS, negotiated with the studio to buy the package for the network. Aubrey summed up his thinking this way: "I decided that the feature film was the thing for TV. A $ 250,000 specially-tailored television show just could not compete with a film that cost three or four million dollars." However, the network's chairman, William Paley , who considered the scheduling of old movies "uncreative", vetoed the Paramount transaction.
148-453: It was not until after Aubrey's departure from CBS in early 1965 that Paley finally conceded on the issue and cleared the way for the network to embark on its own prime-time weekly movie broadcast. After completing negotiations with various studios that year, the network acquired exclusive rights to televise a total of 90 titles from Columbia Pictures , United Artists , Paramount , and Warner Brothers —news of which resulted in rumors that
296-545: A CBS Thursday Night Movie , a CBS Friday Night Movie , an NBC Saturday Night Movie , and to complete the week, an ABC Sunday Night Movie ." Critic Jack Gould wondered whether a "battle of film-against-film may not be as remote as some in TV had originally thought." And upon the arrival of 1969, another media critic made a hopeful New Year's prediction that "[s]ome network will bravely drop one of those nightly two-hour movie reruns" and replace it with "two half-hour situation-comedies plus
444-649: A bio-pic on the life of Irish playwright Seán O'Casey . Then the next evening, the Friday Night Movie kicked off its sophomore year with an oddity: American-International Pictures' Beach Party (1963), the first of a series of zany romantic comedies featuring Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello . Additionally, the network poured forth the remainder of United Artists titles acquired two years earlier—a balance of 20 motion pictures, including Stanley Kramer's tense racial drama The Defiant Ones (1958), Jules Dassin's caper classic Topkapi (1964), as well as
592-527: A multiple-camera setup , but are written to be easily broken up into individual 30- or 60-minute episodes for syndication . Many such movies relocate the cast of the show to an exotic overseas setting. However, although they may be advertised as movies, they are really simply extended episodes of television shows, such as the pilots and the finales of Star Trek: The Next Generation , Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager . Most of these are made and shown during sweeps period in order to attract
740-575: A 90-minute programming time slot (including commercials ), later expanded to two hours, and were usually broadcast as a weekly anthology television series (for example, the ABC Movie of the Week ). Many early television movies featured major stars, and some were accorded higher budgets than standard television series of the same length, including the major dramatic anthology programs which they came to replace. In 1996, 264 made-for-TV movies were made by five of
888-485: A Hollywood studio and featuring actors who had not appeared in the original conception. As a result of such practices, the networks were "beginning to smart under the criticisms of their cutting and re-shaping" of additional films such as Secret Ceremony (1968) and The Night of the Following Day (1968). This was a consequence of the displacement impact of broadcast television. Motion picture studios, having withstood
1036-507: A Mobster (1961)—a film so violent that its repeat performance in June 1968 had to be postponed for a later broadcast, as it had been scheduled just two days after the slaying of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy . It was replaced by a rerun of the aforementioned One Man's Way . As the CBS Thursday (and Friday) Night Movie entered the 1967-68 season, media critics took increased notice of
1184-618: A brief surge in audience numbers with CBS's two-part world TV premiere of The Guns of Navarone (1961), based on the Alistair MacLean best-seller . Then 14 days later, the comedy Doctor, You've Got to Be Kidding (1966) qualified as the sixth most-watched program of the Nielsen's rating period, while the Glenn Ford thriller Fate is the Hunter (1964) scored at #16 during the same week. And in
1332-564: A daily newscast at 19:00. In Ireland , prime starts at 18:30 and ends at 22:00. In Italy , prime time (called "prima serata") starts between 21:00 and 21:45 (main channels, including RTV) and ends between 23:30 and 00:30. On Friday and Saturday night, some shows last until 06:30–07:00. It usually follows news and, on some networks (like Rai 1 and Canale 5 ), a slot called "access prime time". Shows, movies, and sport events are usually shown during prime time. Much like in Germany, prime time in
1480-550: A daily newscast from 19:00 to 20:00. Also, many private broadcasters have daily newscasts either before or after the HTY newscast, at around 20.05, followed by the start of their own prime time. Many broadcasters without daily newscasts start their prime time at 20:00. Prime time generally ends between 22:00 and 23:00, followed by the late night edition of the network newscast and adult-oriented programming. In Denmark , prime time starts at 20:00. In Finland , prime time starts at 21:00. It
1628-447: A drama that by then had many viewers riveted to their chairs." In fact, CBS slated the film for broadcast during the all-important sweeps month of February 1973. However, the strategy backfired; the film finished at #38 for the week it was shown. This prompted columnist Rick DuBrow to call out TV executives who persisted in programming a "comfortably predictable list of motion pictures and determine by title and category how they will do in
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#17330931986471776-441: A dressing room by a drunken Luftwaffe officer. In earlier years, these scenes would have been considered too racy for prime-time audiences, what with their satire of transvestism and gay sex. As it happened, however, CBS had broadcast another film with similar scenes, albeit in a more serious framework, less than four months prior— Luchino Visconti's The Damned (1969), originally rated X when it first opened in theaters. Obviously,
1924-417: A film which deals with abortion in three different decades (the 1950s, the 1970s and the 1990s) became a huge success, and was HBO 's highest rated film on record. If a network orders a two-hour television pilot for a proposed show, it will usually broadcast it as a television movie to recoup some of the costs even if the network chooses to not order the show to series. Often a successful series may spawn
2072-419: A film's expenses would be lessened by filming using video , as the movies were contracted by television studios, these films were required to be shot on 35 mm film . Various techniques are often employed to "pad" television movies with low budgets and underdeveloped scripts, such as music video -style montages, flashbacks, or repeated footage, and extended periods of dramatic slow motion footage. However,
2220-613: A film's storyline. In some cases, however, it became necessary to remove so much of a film that additional scenes had to be written and produced by a network and then inserted into the movie so that its telecast not only filled a 2-hour time slot but also made sense to viewers. NBC, for example, had contracted with Universal to run the R-rated Three into Two Won't Go (1969) during the fall of 1970. Questionable scenes from this British-made thriller were either severely chopped or eliminated and replaced with 17 minutes of new footage produced in
2368-623: A game-saver. Top it off with the Thanksgiving night showing of the same studio's Marco the Magnificent (1965), described by one critic as "long on spectacle and short on plot", and you have the ingredients to a disastrous season. Meanwhile, the movies ABC and NBC offered their viewers appeared to be equally unattractive because when the Nielsen ratings for the November 1968 sweeps were released, not
2516-528: A large television audience and boost viewership for a show. Crossover episodes containing a number of episodes of the characters of individual series interacting with characters across different shows (as has been done with the CSI , NCIS and Chicago franchises, along with between Murder, She Wrote and Magnum, P.I. , Scandal and How to Get Away with Murder , and Ally McBeal and The Practice ) also play as films, encouraging tune-in among all
2664-514: A means of advancing toward that "new-style approach" that in the late 1960s attracted the most viewers. As for 3-year-old feature-films like some of those listed below, however, they were declared old-hat. Thursdays (1968–69): Fridays (1968–69): The 1968-69 TV season finally witnessed a network prime-time movie for each night of the week. As author Robert Beverley Ray neatly summed up, "television had an NBC Monday Night Movie , an NBC Tuesday Night Movie , an ABC Wednesday Night Movie ,
2812-488: A near-standstill in Hollywood and as a result, some studios, among them 20th Century Fox and Paramount, were "waiting to unload their expensive backlog of films" to the networks. Indeed, CBS had completed a deal with Fox a year earlier for exclusive rights to televise some of its most recent films ( Rio Conchos and Guns at Batasi , to name two), but the network had been allowing those to merely trickle through to viewers at
2960-551: A network announcer issued an apology during a commercial break before a substantial portion of the movie was then replayed just to get the continuity back on track. What started out, therefore, as a 2-hour-and-15-minute airing wound up lasting approximately three hours. Then a month later, when the Burt Lancaster film Elmer Gantry (1960) was televised with approximately 30 minutes total in various deletions from its original 146-minute length, viewers complained that because of all
3108-729: A nickname of a strip of holidays, known as Golden Week . Prime time usually takes place from 19:00 until 22:00. After that, programs classified as "PG" (Parental Guidance) are allowed to be broadcast. Frontline dramas appear during this time slot in Cantonese , as well as movies in English. In India , prime time occurs between 20:00 and 23:30. Usually, programmes during prime time are domestic dramas, talent shows and reality shows. Prime time usually takes place from 16:00 to 0:00 in Indonesian time zones , and sinetrons ( soap operas ) dominate majority of
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#17330931986473256-470: A one-hour variety show [whose star is] a very young singer with a Southern accent and a guitar". That forecast proved only half-correct—the singer with the Southern accent and guitar turned out to be Glen Campbell , whose weekly variety show premiered on CBS two weeks into January 1969. Campbell's broadcast, however, replaced neither of the network's movie anthologies. The beginning of the 1969-70 season saw
3404-497: A rape victim in the drama A Case of Rape (1974). My Sweet Charlie (1970) with Patty Duke and Al Freeman Jr. dealt with racial prejudice, and That Certain Summer (1972), starring Hal Holbrook and Martin Sheen , although controversial, was considered the first television movie to approach the subject of homosexuality in a non-threatening manner. If These Walls Could Talk ,
3552-458: A rate of 5 or 6 per season. This became CBS's programming strategy with product leased from other studios as well. Consequently, the schedule of films listed below included a greater number of reruns than in previous years. Thursdays (1969–70): Fridays (1969–70): Upon the arrival of the summer months, many of the above titles were re-broadcast. However, there was also a smattering of premieres on CBS throughout this period. Island in
3700-550: A result of the film's success, the new season would witness CBS's determination to increase its output of works produced directly for television—especially during late February to early April 1971, when 5 out of 11 features shown were made-for-TV world premieres. Thursdays (1970–71): Fridays (1970–71): The above schedule was augmented by the Wednesday, November 25, 1970 TV premiere of The Unsinkable Molly Brown , starring Debbie Reynolds . And on February 14, 1971, there
3848-570: A result, ABC planned a second anthology of new offerings under the title, Movie of the Weekend . By contrast with its competitors, CBS had contributed a scant number of made-for-TV feature-length films; and what little they had scheduled were mostly produced in association with independent companies like QM Productions , or CBS-owned Cinema Center Films , through its television film unit, Cinema Center 100. However, four years earlier, CBS had entered into an agreement with Universal to contribute $ 340,000 to
3996-578: A second Natalie Wood attraction, Sex and the Single Girl (1964), initiated a third year's roster for the CBS Friday Night Movie. This entry garnered a lot of box-office in its heyday, but critics had labeled it a dud. In fact, similarly harsh judgments had been passed by critics on most of the other films CBS ran that season. With the exception of John Ford's Cheyenne Autumn (1964)—and even some of Ford's biographers refused to rank this among
4144-517: A second anthology on Friday nights. The network's movie schedule for the 1966-67 season would begin in September with the Thursday Night Movie's television debut of the first half of The Music Man (1962), starring Robert Preston and Shirley Jones . The concluding half of the film would be televised the following evening as the premiere offering of the new CBS Friday Night Movie . Among
4292-417: A second prime time, running from 14:30–17:00 which coincides with the extended Spanish lunch break . Shows airing in the secondary prime time period on many occasions beat those prime-time shows at night on a daily basis. The second prime time occurs only on weekdays, though and the slot is usually filled with The Simpsons , news , soap operas and talk shows . In Sweden , prime time starts at 20:00. It
4440-448: A series of commercials", this move by CBS to collaborate with a filmmaker on the broadcast of his own work suggested that commerce could, on occasion, co-exist with art. Also of note, the religiously-themed film aired on Good Friday . Thursdays (1966–67) : Fridays (1966–67) : The broadcast of Toys in the Attic in late April was the final CBS premiere of a theatrical film during
4588-495: A series that contains a predetermined, limited number of episodes. Precursors of "television movies" include Talk Faster, Mister , which aired on WABD (now WNYW ) in New York City on December 18, 1944, and was produced by RKO Pictures , and the 1957 The Pied Piper of Hamelin , based on the poem by Robert Browning , and starring Van Johnson , one of the first filmed "family musicals" made directly for television . That film
CBS Thursday Night Movie - Misplaced Pages Continue
4736-570: A single network movie telecast finished in the Top 20—an interesting predicament considering the lofty pronouncements made a year earlier by top media observers concerning the popularity of feature films on television. But as CBS vice-president Michael Dann noted, "There has been a decided shift [in audience] since the opening of the season. I think you will see a decline in all movies for television." And as Rick Du Brow, UPI's television critic, confirmed: The drop in audience occurred almost immediately after
4884-545: A spin-off from a TV series including The Incredible Hulk Returns , The Trial of the Incredible Hulk and The Death of the Incredible Hulk . Occasionally, television movies are used as sequels to successful theatrical films. For example, only the first film in The Parent Trap series was released theatrically. The Parent Trap II , III and Hawaiian Honeymoon were produced for television, and similarly,
5032-561: A summer fling, for at the beginning of the 1970-71 season , CBS cancelled its Tuesday anthology to make room for its customary sitcom fodder with new episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres . With the scheduling of more recent films from Hollywood, the three major networks were faced with the question of how best to present increasingly risque material without offending the mainstream tastes of their audiences. Up until 1970, censors would simply bleep salty dialogue or edit shots, trusting that such excisions would not detract from
5180-539: A surprise April announcement that it would add yet a third movie anthology on Tuesday nights (7:30-9:30 pm, ET). It featured a combination of reruns plus some novel offerings, like the 1962 fantasy Five Weeks in a Balloon , with Barbara Eden (on June 30); a 1968 doomsday thriller Panic in the City , featuring Howard Duff (on July 7); and the 1965 remake of the classic She , starring Ursula Andress (July 21). For film fans, however, this third movie-night proved to be only
5328-424: A television movie sequel after ending its run. For example, Babylon 5: The Gathering launched the science fiction series Babylon 5 and is considered to be distinct from the show's regular run of one-hour episodes. Babylon 5 also has several made-for-TV movie sequels set within the same fictional continuity. The 2003 remake of Battlestar Galactica began as a two-part miniseries that later continued as
5476-577: A weekly television program. Another example is the Showtime movie Sabrina, the Teenage Witch , which launched the sitcom of the same name that originally aired on ABC, and used the same actress ( Melissa Joan Hart ) for the lead role in both. The term "TV movie" is also frequently used as vehicles for "reunions" of long-departed series, as in Return to Mayberry and A Very Brady Christmas . They can also be
5624-498: Is "Fill your hands, you?". What perplexed viewers about ABC's censorship was that a week later, the same network would show the movie Patton (1970), leaving George C. Scott's swear words intact—a move that may have emboldened CBS to retain the double entendres and much of the blue language in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), which starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton . The New York Times critic Howard Thompson praised
5772-417: Is a feature-length film that is produced and originally distributed by or to a television network , in contrast to theatrical films made for initial showing in movie theaters , and direct-to-video films made for initial release on home video formats. In certain cases, such films may also be referred to and shown as a miniseries , which typically indicates a film that has been divided into multiple parts or
5920-456: Is also a "midnight prime time" during suhur while the month of Ramadan is commencing. It takes place from 02:00 (or 02:30 in some channels) and ends at the Fajr prayer call, which varies in timing between 04:30 and 05:00. The time slot is usually filled with entertainment and religious programming. In Iraq , prime time runs from 20:00 to 23:00. The main news programs are broadcast at 20:00 and
6068-702: Is from 8:00 pm to 11:00 pm. It is preceded by daily newscasts; Dnevnik RTV SLO (7:00 pm – 8:00 pm) on TV SLO 1, 24ur (6:55 pm – 8:00 pm) on POP TV, Svet na Kanalu A (6:00 pm – 7:00 pm; 7:50 pm–8:0pm), and Danes (7:30 pm – 8:00 pm) on Planet TV. In Spain , prime time refers to the time period in which the most-watched shows are broadcast. Prime time in Spain starts quite late when compared to most nations as it runs from 22:30 till 01:00. Most news programmes in Spain air at 21:00 for an hour and prime time follows. However, due to fierce competition, especially among
CBS Thursday Night Movie - Misplaced Pages Continue
6216-469: Is generally acknowledged to be See How They Run , which debuted on NBC on October 7, 1964. A previous film, The Killers , starring Lee Marvin and Ronald Reagan , was filmed as a TV-movie, although NBC decided it was too violent for television and it was released theatrically instead. The second film to be considered a television movie, Don Siegel 's The Hanged Man , was broadcast by NBC on November 18, 1964. These features originally filled
6364-617: Is preceded by a daily newscast ( Dnevnik ) at 19:00 and followed by a late night newscast ( Vijesti ) at 22:00. In Bulgaria , prime time starts at 20:00 every day (including weekends). Usually, the programmes aired are Bulgarian or Turkish series and reality shows, followed by a late newscast. The Bulgarian National Television broadcasts Po Sveta i u Nas at 20:00 and shows cultural and political programmes from 21:00 to 22:00, with series and late-night news following at 23:00. In Croatia , prime time starts between 20:00 and 20:15. Croatian public broadcaster Hrvatska radiotelevizija broadcasts
6512-502: Is preceded by a daily newscast at 19:30 and local news at 19:50. In Ukraine , prime time ( Ukrainian : прайм-тайм, найкращий час ) runs from 18:30 to 21:30 on working days and from 15:00 to 01:00 on holidays. In the UK , prime time (also known as peak time ) runs from 19:00 to 23:00. Television film A television film , alternatively known as a television movie , made-for-TV film/movie , telefilm , telemovie or TV film/movie ,
6660-409: Is preceded by a daily newscast at 19:30. On TVN , the newscast is aired at 19:00, followed by the newsmagazine Uwaga at 19:50 (weekdays) or 19:45 (weekends), and then the soap opera Na Wspólnej at 20:05 (Monday to Thursday) or 20:00 (Friday to Sunday), various movies on Fridays, serials or films (winter and summer) on Saturdays, and programmes or films (winter and summer) on Sundays. On Polsat ,
6808-432: Is preceded by a daily newscast at 20:30. In France prime time starts at 21:10 (20:35 in the 1980s, 20:50 in the 1990s and 2000s, 21:05 in the 2010s). In Georgia , prime time starts between 18:45 and 20:00 and generally ends at midnight. However, on Friday night / Saturday morning, prime time usually continues until 1:00. At 20:00 each evening, Das Erste (The First), Germany 's oldest public television network, airs
6956-445: Is preceded by daily news programmes at 18:30. At weekends, prime time begins at 19:00, with blockbuster movies and television shows. Before 15 March 2015, the public television station M1 began its prime time with a game show at 18:30, which was followed by the daily news programme Híradó at 19:30. After the news, the channel broadcast American and other series, talk shows, magazines, and news programmes until 22:00, after which came
7104-565: Is the High School Musical series , which aired its first two films on the Disney Channel . The first television movie was so successful that a sequel was produced, High School Musical 2 , that debuted in August 2007 to 17.2 million viewers (this made it the highest-rated non-sports program in the history of basic cable and the highest-rated made-for-cable movie premiere on record). Due to
7252-641: Is used by the major television networks to broadcast their season's nightly programming. The term prime-time is often defined in terms of a fixed time period—for example (in the United States ), from 8:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. ( Eastern and Pacific Time ) or 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. ( Central and Mountain Time ). In India and some Middle Eastern countries, prime time consists of programmes that are aired on television between 8:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. local time . In Bangladesh ,
7400-616: The Midnight Run sequels have all been released as made-for-TV movies despite the first having a strong run in theaters. These types of films may be, and more commonly are, released direct-to-video ; there have been some films, such as The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning (a prequel to the film version of The Dukes of Hazzard ) and James A. Michener's Texas , which have been released near simultaneously on DVD and on television, but have never been released in theatres. Made-for-TV movie musicals have also become popular. One prime example
7548-624: The Americas do not affect the domestic prime-time programmes but only during daytime. In Pakistan , prime time is from 19:00 to 00:00 Pakistan Standard Time . During this time the majority of the local channels broadcast their most popular shows. However, state channels broadcast Khabarnama (New Bulletin) from past many decades. Like other Muslim-majority nations , during Ramadan , the broadcasters also air special religious and cooking shows starting from 14:00 to 19:00/19:30 with "Ramadan" special programs airing from 19:30/20:00 to 21:30/22:00 affecting
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#17330931986477696-480: The Anthony Quinn film Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962)—the network considered the entry too short. Requiem had a running time of 85 minutes, but this was judged untenable by CBS executives. Columbia Pictures, the film's theatrical distributor, was contacted and arrangements were made to "pad" the film with extra footage. According to the movie's producer, David Susskind , there were 40 minutes of outtakes from
7844-622: The CBS Sunday Night Movie appeared to be holding its own in terms of audience shares, especially during the first half of October when it was rated the third most-watched network telecast. Unfortunately, those numbers did not hold up; and with ratings for the New CBS Friday Night Movie also sagging, it was decided the upcoming season to return the Sunday Night Movie to its original Friday night time slot and to transfer
7992-416: The CBS Sunday Night Movie , airing from 7:30 to 9:30 pm (Eastern Time). This was a highly publicized programming change because it necessitated the cancellation of CBS's signature variety series, the long-running Ed Sullivan Show . After 23 successful years, this icon of the airwaves was ordered to vacate the premises and beginning in September, the CBS Sunday Night Movie launched its 1971-72 season with
8140-487: The CBS Thursday Night Movie half its audience. It occurred on an evening in mid-November when roughly 100 affiliates refused to air the true-crime film In Cold Blood (1967) "on the grounds of explicit content"—specifically, the uncensored use of the word "frigging" by one of its two lead characters. ABC, however, experienced viewer wrath of a different kind when John Wayne's most famous line of dialogue ever,
8288-531: The Jerry Lewis comedy, The Delicate Delinquent (1957). Columbia Pictures also made a strong showing during the Thursday Night Movie's second season with such entries as Sam Peckinpah's Civil War epic Major Dundee (1964) and the Jack Lemmon comedy, Good Neighbor Sam (1964). But Warner Brothers output, so prominent throughout the anthology's first season, consisted of only five features—and one of those
8436-513: The Jesse Stone CBS television movies, "broadcast networks aren't investing in made-for-TV movies anymore". The slack has been taken up by cable networks such as Hallmark Channel , Syfy , Lifetime and HBO, with productions such as Temple Grandin and Recount , often utilizing top creative talent. High-calibre limited programming which would have been formerly scheduled solely as a two-hour film or miniseries also has been re-adapted to
8584-519: The Netherlands usually begins at 20:30 in order to not compete with Nederlanse Omroep Stichting 's flagship 20:00 newscast. In Norway , prime time starts at 19:45. On the NRK1 channel it is preceded by the daily newscast Dagsrevyen at 19:00. Locally, prime time is called beste sendetid (lit. "best time for broadcasting"). In Poland , prime time starts around 20:00 (sometimes 20:30). On TVP1 , it
8732-474: The Philippines , prime-time blocks usually run from 17:00 to 23:00 on weekdays, and 17:30 to 23:30 on weekends. The weekday prime-time blocks usually consists of local Philippine television drama (soap operas) and foreign television series. The network's highest-rated programs are usually aired right after the evening newscast at 18:30 or 20:00, while a foreign series (usually a Korean Drama ) usually airs before
8880-442: The 1930s through the 1950s for short-term showings in movie theaters, usually as a double bill alongside a major studio release. Like made-for-TV movies, B movies were designed as a disposable product, had low production costs and featured second-tier actors. ABC 's Battlestar Galactica: Saga of a Star World premiered to an audience of over 60 million people on September 17, 1978. The most-watched television movie of all time
9028-470: The 1970s and 1980s before realizing that the proceeds from his first theatrical film, A Christmas Story (released in 1983), far exceeded anything he had ever done in television. Nonetheless, notable exceptions exist of high production quality and well-known casts and crews that even earned awards, such as The Diamond Fleece , a 1992 Canadian TV film directed by Al Waxman and starring Ben Cross , Kate Nelligan and Brian Dennehy . It earned Nelligan
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#17330931986479176-405: The 1970s were a source of controversy, such as Linda Blair 's 1974 film Born Innocent and 1975's Sarah T. - Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic , as well as 1976's Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway and its 1977 sequel , Alexander: The Other Side of Dawn , which were vehicles for former Brady Bunch actress Eve Plumb . Another significant film was Elizabeth Montgomery 's portrayal of
9324-407: The 1993 Gemini Award for "Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Dramatic Program or Mini-Series". Occasionally, a long-running television series is used as the basis for television movies that air during the show's run (as opposed to the above-mentioned "reunion specials"). Typically, such movies employ a filmed single-camera setup even if the television series is videotaped using
9472-423: The 19:00-to-22:00 time slot is known as prime time . Several national broadcasters, like Maasranga Television , Gazi TV, Channel 9, and Channel i, broadcast their prime-time shows from 20:00 to 23:00 after their primetime news at 19:00. During Islamic holidays , most of the television stations broadcast their specially-produced shows and world television premieres starting from 15:00 to midnight. During Ramadan ,
9620-431: The 9:30–11:00 time slot (Eastern Time). It was not to be a successful outing, chiefly because it was scheduled opposite NBC's own World Premiere series, which began one hour earlier. In order to accommodate its new suspense anthology, CBS shuffled its Sunday night line-up to make room for its alternative presentation-format for old movies. Thus what had been known for the past 5 years as the CBS Friday Night Movie became
9768-459: The American network TV-movie had actually occurred years earlier, when NBC had entered into an agreement with Universal wherein the studio produce films approximately 98 minutes long to be broadcast initially on the network. Universal, however, retained the distribution rights to re-release these productions in overseas theatre and television markets. Moreover, NBC agreed to pay "from 30 to 65 percent of
9916-552: The Candelabra (which featured established film actors Michael Douglas and Matt Damon in the lead roles) and a limited range of scene settings and camera setups. Even Spielberg's Duel , while having decent production values, features a very small cast (apart from Dennis Weaver, all other actors appearing in the film play smaller roles) and mostly outdoor shooting locations in the desert. The movies typically employ smaller crews, and rarely feature expensive special effects . Although
10064-474: The Commerce Committee, led an investigation into alleged broadcast profanity. He later told one reporter, "Frankly, there have been some things that have shocked me. There have been four-letter words used on radio. Of course, they haven't gone that far on television...the networks have bleeped them out." Apparently the senator overlooked network film-telecasts, for it was the potty-mouth controversy that cost
10212-596: The Friday made-for-TV movie anthology to Tuesdays. However, one trend introduced late in 1971—the sporadic pre-emption of CBS's Thursday films for news specials—would continue into the next season. This was largely due to the fact that 1972 was not only an election year, but it was also a time when an American president made important overseas state visits to both China and the Soviet Union. It is during such events that information programming enjoys its most receptive audience. And in
10360-565: The Griffin show was of little consequence when one considers that his program was being broadcast on only 129 affiliates, whereas the CBS Late Movie debuted on 179. It was also a wise business decision when taking into account that the network was paying, on average, only $ 30,000-40,000 for each of the 220 movies leased from Warner Brothers and MGM . At such cheap rates, CBS was clearing $ 100,000 per late-night broadcast. Meanwhile, in prime time,
10508-503: The Sun (1957), based on Alec Waugh's best-selling post- WWII novel about interracial tensions on a Caribbean island, was shown for the first time the evening of June 11, 1970. And on August 14, there was the TV debut of Nine Hours to Rama (1963), starring Horst Buchholz as the Hindu extremist who assassinated Gandhi . Moreover, to fill out its summer movie fare, the network followed through on
10656-487: The TV premiere of the Spencer Tracy - Katharine Hepburn 1967 comedy-drama, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner . But this would be remembered as the year the holiday classic The Homecoming: A Christmas Story (1971), a TV film starring Patricia Neal , was first aired. Critics lavished unqualified praise, including one writer who labeled it "a lovely pre-holiday program—sweet but never cloying and sparked with humor." Not only
10804-585: The United States and Canada. The 1971 made-for-TV movie Brian's Song was also briefly released to theatres after its success on television, and was even remade in 2001. In some instances, television movies of the period had more explicit content included in the versions prepared to be exhibited theatrically in Europe. Examples of this include The Legend of Lizzie Borden , Helter Skelter , Prince of Bel Air and Spectre . Many television movies released in
10952-410: The above films were re-issued as CBS prepared a new schedule for its two anthologies. In terms of quality and viewer attention, it was to mark the beginning of a dismal time for network movies. Just as the previous season had begun with the biography of a playwright (Seán O'Casey), CBS followed up in early September 1968 with another film based on a stage author's life. This time, it was Moss Hart , and
11100-576: The acknowledged pioneer in TV-movies until 1969, when the ABC network produced and premiered its new weekly series of made-for-TV films, The ABC Movie of the Week . Some of these features were so popular that they were later released to theaters in America and Europe for further exhibition, among them Joseph Sargent's Tribes (1970), Buzz Kulik's Brian's Song (1971) and Steven Spielberg's Duel (1971). As
11248-418: The bowdlerization and/or alteration of a theatrical film's content. But at the same time, it became apparent to all three networks that if some movies could not be successfully repackaged for family viewing, then perhaps a stronger emphasis should be focused on producing more films specifically for television. As a result, this hybrid genre began to exert a larger presence on American home screens. The origin of
11396-556: The broadcasters also air special religious and cooking shows starting from 14:00 to 20:00. affecting the primetime hours. Late-night talk shows are also aired from 01:00 to 04:00, except during Ramadan. Religious shows are also broadcast simultaneously from 01:00, along with talk shows and news analysis. In television in China , the 19:00-to-22:00 time slot is known as Golden Time ( Traditional Chinese : 黄金時間; Simplified Chinese : 黄金时间; Pinyin : Huángjīn shíjiān). The term also influenced
11544-585: The commercial channel Sat.1 suffered a significant loss of audience share when it tried moving the start of its prime time to 20:00. In Greece , prime time runs from 21:00 (usually following the news) to midnight. In Hungary , prime time on weekdays on the two big commercial stations ( RTL and TV2 ) starts at 19:00 with game shows, tabloid, and docu-reality programmes. At 21:00, two popular soap operas air: Barátok közt and Jóban Rosszban , which follows at 21:30. American and other series, movies, talk-shows, and magazines run until 23:30. The prime-time lineup
11692-460: The country's most-watched news broadcast, the main edition of the Tagesschau , which is also simulcast on most of its other specialist and regional channels (The Third). The conclusion of the bulletin 15 minutes later marks the beginning of prime time, as it has since the 1950s. In consequence, most other channels—public and private alike—also choose to start their prime time at 20:15. In the 1990s,
11840-420: The crucial first weeks of their broadcast. Ms. Lowry's objections notwithstanding, however, as long as movie anthologies continued to deliver better-than-average product, superior viewer ratings would continue to endure—which they did. Below is listed the entire CBS roster for a season that began with bubbling confidence. Thursdays (1967–68) : Fridays (1967–68): From May through August 1968, many of
11988-410: The daily news magazine Este and the late edition of Híradó . From 15 March 2015, Duna began broadcasting all of the entertainment programming transferred to it from that date from M1, meaning that prime time on Duna now begins at 18:00, starting with the simulcast of the 18:00 edition of Híradó from the newly re-launched news channel, M1. In Iceland , prime time starts at 19:30. It is preceded by
12136-456: The direction of feature-length movies," and the networks appeared to agree. For word came that ABC and CBS "were together investing a whopping $ 92 million in the acquisition of 112 feature length movies for television over the next five years." Not all industry observers, however, were receptive to this new trend in viewership. Syndicated entertainment writer Cynthia Lowry, for example, noted that CBS, as well as its two competitors, were engaged in
12284-567: The director's best—the movies offered by the network's anthology in the fall of 1968 were by and large an inferior collection. Warner Brothers contributions, for example, ranged from soap-opera pathos ( Youngblood Hawke , which The New York Times called "as thin and glossy as wax paper") to wooden heroics (the Troy Donahue western, A Distant Trumpet , with a story that "looked implausible or just plain hollow.") Additionally, such MGM fluff as Quick Before It Melts (1964) could hardly be called
12432-420: The early 1950s. This new project was originally envisioned by producer Philip Barry, Jr. (son of the playwright Philip Barry ) to exclusively consist of "all-suspense of various sorts." Barry further promised viewers that the new anthology would avoid "doing any law enforcement shows, no doctors, no lawyers, none of the usual things." Thus, the New CBS Friday Night Movie began its run in September 1971, occupying
12580-468: The evening and ends at 23:00. In Austria , prime time usually starts at 20:15 after the news broadcast of ORF 1 . Even though ORF2 has its news from 19:30 to 20:00, they also start broadcasting prime time content at 20:15. The same applies for nearly all channels seated in Austria or Germany that are broadcast in Austria. In Bosnia and Herzegovina , prime time starts at 20:00 and finishes at 22:00. It
12728-474: The evening newscast or precedes the late night newscast. On weekends, non-scripted programming such as comedy series, talent shows, reality shows and current affairs shows air in prime time. For the minor networks, prime time consists of American television series on weekdays, with encores of those shows on weekends. Prime time originally started earlier at around 19:00, but the evening newscasts were lengthened to 90 minutes and now start at 18:30, instead of
12876-401: The evening of Valentine's Day 1972, the network mailed a love-letter to America's film fans when it broke with network late-night tradition by cancelling its Merv Griffin talk-show to make way for The CBS Late Movie . In so doing, the organization that years earlier had spurned the scheduling of old movies as "uncreative" was suddenly running a total of 7 feature-films each week. The axing of
13024-467: The evening. Taiwanese drama series played then are called 8 o'clock series and are expected to have high viewer ratings. Also, the evening news usually start from 18:00 or 19:00. In Thailand , prime time dramas (ละคร; lakhon) air from 20:30 to 22:30. Most dramas are soap operas . Prime time dramas are popular and influential to Thai society. In Vietnam , prime time is also known as Golden Time ( Vietnamese : Giờ vàng ). Prime time starts at 20:00 in
13172-483: The film first so that Universal could instead open The Plainsman in theaters. The network agreed, but only on condition Universal promise in return "to give [CBS] an existing feature film from their backlog." (That replacement feature turned out to be the 1950 fantasy Harvey , starring James Stewart .) Nevertheless, CBS vice-president Michael Dann , a fan of the TV-movie innovation, predicted two months afterward that in
13320-411: The film had to "undergo some severe editing to conform" with a TV audience's acceptance and the resulting presentation, which was pre-screened for affiliates via closed-circuit, was so incoherent that many stations refused to run it. The Damned was never intended for prime-time airing. Instead, it was among the initial presentations by CBS for television's first late-night network film anthology, for on
13468-559: The film in the studio's vault that had to be located. It was from these that an extra 10 minutes was assembled and added to the CBS print. In fact, this is believed to be "the first time television has added footage to a movie." All lists of titles and show-dates in this article were culled from the archives of The New York Times , Corpus Christi Caller-Times , and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel via microfilm. From here through
13616-478: The films CBS had acquired from Paramount Pictures in 1965, there included the Alfred Hitchcock shocker Psycho (1960), which was scheduled for premiere the night of Friday, September 23, 1966. However, just days before the film was to air, U.S. Senatorial candidate Charles H. Percy's (R-Illinois) college-aged daughter, Valerie, was reported slain by an unknown assailant, and details of the crime went viral in
13764-480: The hefty $ 500,000 price that CBS had paid Paramount for exclusive rights to televise the movie. The preemption of Psycho aside, however, the 1966-67 season saw an increase over the previous season in the number of Paramount films televised on CBS. These included Grace Kelly's Academy Award-winning performance in The Country Girl (1954), Marlon Brando's only directorial effort, One-Eyed Jacks (1961), and
13912-1024: The highest-rated television program airs at 21:00. In Japanese television , prime time runs from 19:00 to 23:00. Especially, the 19:00-to-22:00 time slot is also known as Golden Time ( ゴールデン・タイム , gōruden taimu , or just Golden ) . The term also influenced a nickname of a strip of holidays in Japan known as Golden Week . Malaysia prime time starts with the main news from 20:00 to 20:30 (now 20:00 to 21:00) and ends either at 23:00 or 1:00, or possibly later. Usually, programmes during prime time are domestic dramas, foreign drama series (mostly American), films, and entertainment programmes. Programmes classified as 18 are not allowed to be broadcast before 10:00 p.m., but on Radio Televisyen Malaysia , most programmes on this slot are rated U (U means Umum in Malay and literally General Viewing or General Audiences in English) throughout
14060-421: The inferiority of the films themselves. In short, he believed that audiences were "getting weary of the old-style approach" and that adherence to conventional modes of presentation by the networks had become constrictive, obsolete, and irrelevant for modern audiences. By means of contrast, the columnist held up newer, hip, innovative variety shows (like NBC's topical and sardonic Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In ) as
14208-679: The inspirational One Man's Way (1964), based on the life of the influential pastor, Norman Vincent Peale . In fact, CBS aired this film on April 4, 1968, the night of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. ; it seemed an especially apt gesture by the network, even if the film had been scheduled months earlier for just that very evening. Among the network's other offerings, Warner Brothers movies maintained their steady minority presence, among them actor Vic Morrow's eccentric interpretation of Prohibition-era bootlegger Dutch Schultz in Portrait of
14356-474: The invention of videotape . Many television networks were against film programming, fearing that it would loosen the network's arrangements with sponsors and affiliates by encouraging station managers to make independent deals with advertisers and film producers . Conversely, beginning in the 1950s episodes of American television series would be placed together and released as feature films in overseas cinemas. Television networks were in control of
14504-450: The less expensive digital 24p video format has made some quality improvements on the television movie market. Part of the reason for the lower budgets comes from the lack of revenue streams from them; whereas a theatrical film can make money from ticket sales, ancillary markets , and syndication, most television films lacked those revenue streams, and the films are seldom rerun . Raconteur Jean Shepherd produced several television films in
14652-421: The long decline of theater-attendance by families (who presumably preferred to stay home and watch TV), had increasingly re-crafted their product during the 1960s to appeal to a smaller, more mature (adult) audience in both theme and presentation. Consequently, some films became essentially impossible to re-cut or revise into family broadcast-ready entertainment. Recognizing this, NBC soon abandoned these attempts at
14800-562: The made-for-television movie". Network-made television movies in the United States have tended to be inexpensively-produced and perceived to be of low quality. Stylistically, these films often resemble single episodes of dramatic television series. Often, television films are made to "cash in" on the interest centering on stories currently prominent in the news, as the films based on the "Long Island Lolita" scandal involving Joey Buttafuoco and Amy Fisher were in 1993. The stories are written to reach periodic semi- cliffhangers coinciding with
14948-407: The main channel ( Jednotka ) prime time starts at 20:10, and on the second one (Dvojka) prime-time programming starts at 20:00. The two biggest private broadcasters set the start of prime-time programming at 20:20 ( Markíza ) and 20:30 ( TV JOJ ). Generally, however, prime time is considered to be from 20:00 to 23:00. In Slovenia , prime time, the period in which the most-watched shows are broadcast,
15096-476: The mature topics and risque themes explored in network movies—subject matter heretofore considered taboo in TV-land. For example, Jack Gould of The New York Times , singled out the network's September 1967 broadcast of Billy Wilder's The Apartment (1960), with its frank yet satirical treatment of office politics and adultery. Gould noted "[t]he paradox...that in shows expressly produced for TV there continues to be
15244-614: The most stable form of TV program"—stable, at least, in the sense that all three major networks had, by then, each committed two nights per week of their prime-time schedules to old but recent films. And Gould's colleague, George Gent, writing on the same page and same issue of the Times , confirmed this sentiment after "national Nielsen figures" revealed that CBS's two-part TV-premiere of the prisoner-of-war drama The Great Escape (1963) had been ranked #1 and #2 of that week's most-watched programs. "Audience taste," concluded Gent, "continues to run in
15392-447: The most valuable prime time slots available for programming, so syndicators of independent television films had to settle for fewer television markets and less desirable time periods. This meant much smaller advertising revenues and license fees compared with network-supplied programming. The term "made-for-TV movie" was coined in the United States in the early 1960s as an incentive for movie audiences to stay home and watch what
15540-470: The movie was Act One (1963), based on Hart's best-selling autobiography of the same title. Act One had already aired on local stations in a few markets, but this was its first network showing. Thus, CBS declared the actual premiere date of the Thursday Night Movie's fourth season as September 26, when another biographical picture, the musical Gypsy , starring Natalie Wood as burlesque queen Gypsy Rose Lee , made its television bow. The next evening,
15688-451: The national print and TV-radio media, including one news article that described the "blonde and pretty" Miss Percy as having been "beaten and stabbed to death in her bed." The inevitable analogy between Valerie Percy and a "blonde and pretty" Janet Leigh , plus the fact that both the senator's daughter and the Leigh character in the film were both murdered while in a vulnerable state (Miss Leigh in
15836-409: The near-future "the studios will be making 50 to 75 such pictures a year." The 1970-71 season would prove him correct. And when the Thursday Night Movie opened its fall schedule with the premiere of a low-budget, made-for-TV movie, rather than a proven Hollywood blockbuster guaranteed to lure mass viewership, it became CBS's way of declaring its commitment to product that, although cheaply manufactured,
15984-406: The network would actually slate films for two prime-time nights rather than just one. This scheduling addition, however, would not be made until a season later; but reports of further meetings between CBS and Columbia over the acquisition of 20 more titles signaled that the network was now a serious movie-night contender. The Thursday Night Movie thus began on September 16, 1965, with the TV debut of
16132-569: The network-scheduled times for the insertion of commercials , and are further managed to fill, but not exceed, the fixed running times allotted by the network to each movie "series". In the case of films made for cable channels, they may rely on common, repetitive tropes (Hallmark Channel, for example, is notorious for its formulaic holiday romances, while Lifetime movies are well known for their common use of damsel in distress storylines). The movies tend to rely on smaller casts, one such exception being those produced for premium cable , such as Behind
16280-478: The newer "limited series" format over a period of weeks (rather than the consecutive days usually defined by a miniseries) where a conclusion is assured; an example of such would be The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story , and these are most often seen on cable networks and streaming services such as Netflix . In a 1991 New York Times article, television critic John J. O'Connor wrote that "few artifacts of popular culture invite more condescension than
16428-608: The news headlines, seven days a week; on Channel U, prime time ends at 23:00 seven days a week. Generally, however, prime time is considered to be from 18:00 to 00:00. In South Korea , prime time usually runs from 19:30 to 23:00 during weekdays, while on Saturdays and Sundays, it runs from 18:00 to 23:00. Family-oriented television shows are broadcast before 22:00, and adult-oriented television shows air after 22:00. In Taiwan , prime time (called bādiǎn dàng —八點檔—in Mandarin Chinese , literally eight o'clock slot) starts at 8 p.m. in
16576-476: The news is aired at 18:50, followed by the sitcom Świat według Kiepskich at 19:30. In Russia television prime time is between 19:00 and 23:00 on working days and from 15:00 to 01:00 on holidays. On radio stations there are morning, day and evening prime times. The most common division: morning—6:30 to 10:00; day—~12:00 to 14:00; evening—16:00 to 21:00. Public television in Slovakia consists of two channels; on
16724-633: The next season, with the Watergate scandal gathering steam despite President Nixon's landslide re-election , television documentaries and network panel discussions would draw better-than-usual ratings. Thus, news specials would continue to pinch-hit for the Thursday Night Movie on select occasions. In the fall of 1972, the issue dominating most discussions on matters related to TV and radio involved on-air obscenities. It even preoccupied lawmakers in Congress, where Sen. John Pastore (D-Rhode Island), chairman of
16872-515: The omissions, the movie made little sense. In fact, quite a few entries in the Thursday night anthology during the first season were over 2 hours long—and this was without commercial interruptions. These included The Counterfeit Traitor (1961; 140 minutes), Parrish (1961; 138 minutes), Ocean's 11 (1960; 127 minutes), Mary, Mary (1963; 126 minutes), and Sunrise at Campobello (1960; 144 minutes). Before their broadcast, each of these films
17020-408: The original The Manchurian Candidate (1962), starring Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey . CBS's new anthology was not to escape notoriety, as the network learned the evening of September 30. During its running of the Jack Lemmon - Kim Novak comedy, The Notorious Landlady , someone at the controls of the film's broadcast inadvertently got the reels mixed up, and it was with some chagrin that
17168-950: The original one-hour newscast that starts at 18:00. In Singapore , prime time begins at 18:00 on Channel 5 , 18:30 on Channel 8 and 19:00 on Channel U , CNA , Suria , Vasantham . which are also the main ( Free-to-air ) television channels in Singapore. On Channel 8, prime time ends at midnight or 0:15 on weekdays, at 0:30 on Saturday nights, and at 23:30 on Sunday nights. On Channel 5, prime time ends at 0:00 on weekdays, at 1:30 (or later) on Saturday nights, and at 0:30 on Sunday nights. On Suria, prime time ends at 22:30 on Monday to Thursday nights, 23:30 on Friday nights, 23:00 on weekends, and at 00:30 or 01:00 on eve and actual days of public holidays. On Vasantham, prime time ends at 23:00 on Mondays to Thursdays, midnight (or later) on Friday and Saturday nights, and at 23:30 on Sunday nights. On Channel NewsAsia, prime time ends at 23:01, immediately after
17316-430: The popularity of the first two films, the second HSM sequel, High School Musical 3: Senior Year , was released as a theatrical film in 2008 instead of airing on Disney Channel; High School Musical 3 became one of the highest-grossing movie musicals. Television movies traditionally were often broadcast by the major networks during sweeps season. Such offerings now are very rare; as Ken Tucker noted while reviewing
17464-516: The primetime hours for some channels. There is also a "midnight prime time" during suhur while the month of Ramadan is commencing. It takes place from 02:00 (or 01:45 in some channels) and ends at the Fajr prayer call, which varies in timing between 04:30 and 05:00. Also, during other Islamic events such as Muharram and Rabi' al-Awwal , some channels broadcast religious shows during day/evening time slots (between 12:00 and 19:00—time varies on channel) or late-night slot (from 22:00). In
17612-669: The private stations prime time has even been delayed until 23:00. Most channels are delaying prime time in order to protect their top shows from sporting events. In the 1990s, prime time in Spain began at 21:00, moving to 21:30 in the latter half of the 1990s and 22:00 in the early 2000s. Commercial broadcaster LaSexta and the second channel from the Public broadcasting La 2 have attempted to shift prime time back to 21:30 in 2006 and Spring 2007, but these attempts have been unsuccessful. Fellow public channel La 1 also tried to pull prime time back to 21:00 in early 2015, to no avail. The lateness in
17760-477: The production costs" in return for U.S. theatrical and syndication rights as well as "the right to show the films first." This pact resulted in such successful TV-films as the disaster movie The Doomsday Flight (1966) starring Jack Lord ; The Borgia Stick (1967), an industrial spy drama with Don Murray and Inger Stevens ; and Prescription: Murder (1968), the original manifestation of Peter Falk's police detective/character, Lt. Columbo. NBC thus remained
17908-426: The programming practice of front-loading —in other words, "piling in early the best feature-films." She warned that later "they will have to put on some of the turkeys—and there are those in every package." Lowry further complained that as a result of the popularity of old movies, new TV programs were "suffering seriously this season from the competition" while attempting to establish a loyal fan base of their own during
18056-693: The programming schedules. Before 2018, daily evening newscasts would kick off primetime between 17:00 and 18:00, although some channels, notably SCTV, broadcast their daily evening newscasts earlier, usually at 16:00 or 16:30. The practice of airing news at primetime ended in 2018 in favor of adding more sinetrons to the schedule, except for TVRI, NET. and Trans7, which have kept their newscasts, Klik Indonesia Petang (at 18:00), Fakta Malam (at 23:00) and Redaksi Malam (at 23:30) on primetime respectively. After prime time, programs classified as Adult, as well as Adult products (generally cigarette ) commercials, may be aired. Like other Muslim-majority nations , there
18204-461: The ratings game." In other words, an Oscar-winning movie that features a hot tabloid item like Liz and Dick exchanging curse-laden insults will not always guarantee a huge TV audience—and unfortunately for the network, it didn't. Prime time Prime-time , or peak-time , is the block of broadcast programming taking place during the middle of the evening for television shows . It is mostly targeted towards adults (and sometimes families). It
18352-480: The run up and aftermath of a nuclear war. The two are often compared on aspects such as realism. Another popular and critically acclaimed television movie was 1971's Duel , written by Richard Matheson , directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Dennis Weaver . Such was the quality and popularity of Duel that it was released to cinemas in Europe and Australia , and had a limited theatrical release to some venues in
18500-534: The season began. And there is no sign that televised network movies will recoup their former popularity, except for an occasional blockbuster, a fluke hit, or a film starring a personality who happens to be a tremendous favorite. The national video ratings for the week ending December 8, for instance, indicated that of 6 motion pictures shown on the three networks, the highest-ranked one among all television shows listed came in 35th. Furthermore, Du Brow offered an explanation for this negative trend, one that went far beyond
18648-506: The season's fifth week, the Gothic thriller Two on a Guillotine and another Glenn Ford picture, The Last Challenge , both wound up in the Top 20. But another trend became evident in CBS's film-anthologies as viewers began to notice a sharp increase of repeat broadcasts. At the same time, there was a corresponding decrease in new films available for showing, and there was a good reason for this. Production of new theatrical films had slackened to
18796-450: The season. From May through August of that year, the series consisted of reruns. For the most part, features that had premiered on a Thursday night were rebroadcast months later on a Friday night, while Friday's premieres aired later in the season on a Thursday. The following September, the CBS Thursday Night Movie began its third season with a film from a new package of Metro-Goldwyn Mayer movies— Jack Cardiff's Young Cassidy (1965),
18944-471: The shower, Miss Percy while asleep) became too much of a coincidence for some of the network's affiliates in the Midwest who announced they would not carry the film. Thus, shortly before Psycho's broadcast, CBS, without notice, yanked it in favor of a Frank Sinatra war film Kings Go Forth (1958). Later that year, CBS decided not to air Psycho at any future date. The film was thus canceled altogether despite
19092-413: The six largest American television networks at the time (CBS, NBC, Fox, ABC, and UPN ), averaging a 7.5 rating. By 2000, only 146 TV movies were made by those five networks, averaging a 5.4 rating, while the number of made-for-cable movies made annually in the U.S. doubled between 1990 and 2000. In several respects, television films resemble B movies , the low-budget films issued by major studios from
19240-461: The start of prime time in Spain is also due to Spanish culture. Spanish people generally work from 09:00–14:00 and then from 17:00–20:00 as opposed to the 09:00–17:00 which is common in other countries. The popular late-night show Crónicas marcianas during the late 1990s–2000 also helped to extend prime time well into the early hours with the show being watched by a share of 40%, despite finishing at 02:00. Spain might also be unique in that it has
19388-421: The studio's million-dollar budgeted remake of the classic western The Plainsman (1966). In return, CBS was granted the right to exclusively premiere the film as a Thursday Night Movie telecast. However, once production was completed and The Plainsman was screened for Universal's top brass, they concluded they had a hit movie on their hands. Thus, the studio re-negotiated with CBS to drop its commitment to run
19536-414: The summer of 1971, CBS prepared its own weekly series of TV-movies for the new fall season. It was dubbed The New CBS Friday Night Movies . but one network representative advertised it as "nothing more than an old-fashioned suspense anthology series," much like the old U.S. Steel Hour or Playhouse 90 —only "tricked out with film," as opposed to live studio broadcasts, the norm for presentation during
19684-504: The summer, the remaining broadcasts consisted of reruns of many of the above films. The series' initial season thus comprised a total of 31 movies–12 from Warner Brothers, 13 from Columbia, 3 from Paramount, 2 from United Artists, plus one classic ( Harvey ) from Universal Studios in a transaction involving an aborted TV-movie deal. (See the article section below on the "Rise of the Made-for-TV Movie.") The next season, CBS would add
19832-517: The surreal comedy The Tiger Makes Out (1967), on June 29, featuring the husband-and-wife team, Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson . There was also the TV debut of the Danny Kaye military comedy On the Double (1961) on June 8, which included a bawdy sequence in a wartime Berlin cabaret where the comedian/hero, in drag, impersonates Marlene Dietrich singing " Cocktails for Zwei " and is later "seduced" in
19980-412: The telecast, especially the manner in which the network's commercial breaks were carefully placed so as not to detract from the power of Edward Albee's drama. As for the questionable dialogue, Thompson noted that every 'hell' and 'damn' prevailed. He added, "Sharp ears may have caught an early 'goddamn' from Miss Taylor [and] she bellowed the same word later...an agonized shriek underscoring the despair of
20128-567: The traditional concern over the preservation of blandness to suit all age groups. Matters of sex, let alone hints of extramarital relationships, are skirted like the plague." But with the showing of The Apartment (an Academy Award-winner for Best Picture) and other movies that tackled risky subjects, Gould concluded that "as the networks buy even more recent films, the trend [to challenge previous taboos] will very likely increase." A week later, Gould observed that "there appears to be no denying that films of feature length...have established themselves as
20276-408: The whole day. However, programmes broadcast after 23:00 are still considered prime time. As of 2019, NTV7 's prime time continues until 12:00 a.m. Programmes during prime time may have longer commercial breaks due to the number of viewers. Some domestic prime-time productions may be affected because of certain major sporting events such as FIFA World Cup . However, only FIFA World Cup held in
20424-596: Was ABC 's The Day After , which premiered on November 20, 1983, to an estimated audience of 100 million people. The film depicted America after a nuclear war with the Soviet Union , and was the subject of much controversy and discussion at the time of its release due to its graphic nature and subject matter. The BBC 's 1984 television film Threads earned a similar reputation in the United Kingdom as it followed two families and workers of Sheffield City Council in
20572-426: Was a good solid script with people like Maurice Evans and Dean Jagger working with me." The film received respectable notices from the critics, and its reputation has grown ever since. In 1986, for example, critic David Deal would label Brotherhood "one of the very best television movies of the era...a first-rate production." And in recent years, it has acquired the reputation of a conspiracy-theory cult classic. As
20720-734: Was a special Sunday-night world TV premiere of the film Ben-Hur (1959), featuring Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd . This Academy Award winner for Best Picture was five hours long when aired with commercial interruptions, running from 7 pm to midnight (ET). In addition, just as the network had done during the previous year, CBS premiered a handful of movies throughout its summer schedule. Among those were included: The Violent Ones (1967; shown June 3), Night Must Fall (1964; debuting June 10), The Wrong Box (1966; premiering Sunday, June 20), The Frozen Dead (1967; June 24), Doctor Faustus (1968; June 25), The Money Jungle (1968; July 1), and An American Dream (1966; July 2). Throughout
20868-408: Was allowed to insert commercial breaks anywhere he wanted. He was even successful in negotiating a bit of risqué dialogue delivered by Sidney Poitier , the film's star. Given that this occurred just a year after producer-director George Stevens had sued NBC over its telecast of his movie A Place in the Sun (1951), arguing that "the network would damage the film by interrupting the narrative with
21016-424: Was altered by network censors. This is how Chicago news columnist Mike Royko illustrated the situation: The other day, True Grit came to television. The big scene developed. Ned Pepper issued his insult. John Wayne looked furious. Then Wayne uttered his famous line. He said: "Fill your hands, you." That's all. The rest of it, the important SOB, had been snipped or blurred from the sound track...What kind of line
21164-431: Was cut to accommodate what CBS executives deemed a feasible running-time. Sunrise at Campobello , in particular, suffered a loss of nearly an hour from its footage after the network pared it down to a 2-hour broadcast including advertisements. Even so, CBS's affiliated stations were still forced on more than a few occasions to delay the start of their local 11:00 (ET) Thursday night newscasts. In one case, however—that of
21312-470: Was made in Technicolor , a first for television, which ordinarily used color processes originated by specific networks. Most "family musicals" of the time, such as Peter Pan , were not filmed but broadcast live and preserved on kinescope , a recording of a television program made by filming the picture from a video monitor – and the only (relatively inexpensive) method of recording a television program until
21460-476: Was nevertheless new and topical. In this case, the movie was The Brotherhood of the Bell , and the film's star was Glenn Ford , a movie actor who had never appeared in a television-film. In fact, before shooting on the project even began, Ford had been warned by friends in the industry that he would hate the experience. Instead, the actor reported that "it was five of the most enjoyable weeks I've ever spent working...it
21608-543: Was promoted as the equivalent of a first-run theatrical film. Beginning in 1961 with NBC Saturday Night at the Movies , a prime time network showing of a television premiere of a major theatrical film release, the other networks soon copied the format, with each of the networks having several [Day of the Week] Night at the Movies showcases which led to a shortage of movie studio product. The first of these made-for-TV movies
21756-527: Was the animated Gay Purr-ee (1963), a film targeting the pre-teen audience and broadcast just two days before Christmas. Additionally, United Artists pictures during the season also totaled only five; however, the televising of one of those entries, Lilies of the Field (1963), became of particular interest when it was reported that its director, Ralph Nelson , was "given the privilege [by CBS] of editing his own movie for television presentation." Further, Nelson
21904-478: Was this production repeated each year at Yuletide throughout the decade, but it also served as the genesis for the long-running family-drama series The Waltons . Thursdays (1971–72): Sundays (1971–72): Summer premieres included the Vince Edwards crime drama Hammerhead (1968), airing on June 15; the spy melodrama Assignment K (1968), on June 22, with Stephen Boyd and Camilla Sparv ; and
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