VLVL2 (15): made-for-TV movies

[dedalus204 at comcast.net]

371.5:  "'They've been getting quicker over the years, from what I remember,' Prairie said."


[...] "By the early 1970s, overlapping permitted viewers to choose from ten separate movie nights each week. It soon became clear that there were "too many" scheduled movies showings on network television, and "too little" new product coming into the pipeline to fill these slots. Hollywood knew this, and the studios began to charge higher and higher prices for TV screenings. For the widely viewed September 1966 telecast of The Bridge Over the River Kwai, the Ford Motor Company had to put up nearly $2 million to be the sole sponsor.

"Network executives found a solution: make movies aimed for a television premiere. The networks began made-for-television movies in October 1964 when NBC aired _See How They Run_, starring John Forsythe. But the historical turn came in 1966 when NBC contracted with MCA's Universal studios to create a regular series of World Premiere movies-made-for-television. The initial entry of this continuing effort was _Fame Is the Name of the Game_, inauspiciously presented on a Saturday night in November 1966. 

"By the early 1970s made-for-television motion pictures had become a mainstay of network programming, outnumbering theatrical fare in "Nights at the Movies." Profits proved substantial. A typical movie made for television cost $750,000, far less than what Hollywood was demanding for rental of its recent blockbusters. And the ratings were phenomenal."  [...]

"ABC led the way. During the 1971-1972 television season, the ABC _Movie of the Week_ series that was composed of all movies made for television finished as the fifth highest series of the year. The ABC _Movie of the Week_ had premiered in the fall of 1969, placed on the schedule by young executive Barry Diller, then head of prime time programming at ABC, later a founder of the FOX television network. TV movies also began to earn praise for the upstart ABC; the "alphabet" network earned five Emmys, a prestigious George Foster Peabody award, and citations from the NAACP and the American Cancer Society for an airing of Brian's Song in 1972. 

"Made-for-television movies made it possible to deal with topical or controversial material not deemed appropriate for regularly scheduled network series. Celebrated actors and actresses who did not wish to work in series television could be featured in miniseries. Running over a different number of nights such miniseries as _Lonesome Dove_, _Holocaust_, _Shogun_, _Thorn Birds_, and _Fresno_ drew high ratings during key rating measurement periods. In 1983 ABC presented _Winds of War_ on six successive February evenings, for a total of 18 hours at a cost of production of nearly $40 million. This miniseries required more than 200 days to shoot, from a script of nearly 1000 pages. _Winds of War_, starring Robert Mitchum and Ali McGraw, more than returned its sizable investment in this key sweeps month by capturing half the total viewing audience and selling out all its advertising spots at $300,000 per minute."   [...]

http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/M/htmlM/moviesontel/moviesontel.htm