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NBC Saturday Night at the Movies
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NBC Saturday Night at the Movies, was the first continuing weekly prime time network series to show relatively recent feature films from major studios, broadcast in color.[1]
Background and early history
Previously, movies on television were usually low cost B-grade films or older films that the major studios no longer found suitable for theatrical presentation. Movie audiences had grown to expect films to be shown in widescreen color, so older black and white standard-width films had lost much of their value to the theatres. By the mid-1950s, these older films had become standard fare for independent stations and the non-prime time schedules of the network stations.
For their 1961 television season, NBC obtained the rights to broadcast 31 post-1950 movie titles from 20th Century Fox. On September 23, 1961, Saturday Night at the Movies premiered with the 1953 Marilyn Monroe film "How to Marry a Millionaire", presented in color. Because commercial breaks were shorter then, films running less than two hours sometimes ended before the close of the program. The remaining time was filled up with theatrical trailers of upcoming films scheduled to be shown on the series in the future. By about 1968, this was no longer necessary, as commercial breaks had become longer.
The birth of the "made for TV movie"
With the demand of movies increasing during the 1960s, made-for-television films would soon be created by NBC, along with some help from Universal. The first, made during the 1963–64 season, was to have been a new version of Ernest Hemingway's The Killers with Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson and then-future US President Ronald Reagan, but NBC deemed the film too violent for television, so it was released in theaters instead. It was Reagan's last film before he entered politics.
Although there had been filmed feature-length television specials such as The Pied Piper of Hamelin as early as 1957, the film generally regarded as the first made-for-television movie was See How They Run, directed by David Lowell Rich and starring John Forsythe and Senta Berger. It first aired on October 7, 1964 and ushered in a series of other TV-movies over the years, aired on NBC under the title NBC World Premiere Movie. Many of the made-for-television movies on NBC would become TV series in their own right during the late-1960s and early-1970s. One of the more famous examples was Fame Is the Name of the Game (1966), which ultimately served as the pilot episode for the 1968–71 series The Name of the Game.
Influence on other networks
Saturday Night at the Movies attracted sufficient ratings so that NBC and its competitors added more movie series to the prime time schedule. ABC, then a distant third in the ratings, immediately added "The ABC Sunday Night Movie" as a mid-season replacement. CBS was leading the other networks in the ratings at that time and did not immediately add a prime time movie series. However, over the next few years, each of the three networks added weeknight movies to the schedule and by 1968, there was a prime time network movie for every night of the week.
- The ABC Sunday Night Movie
- NBC Monday Night at the Movies
- NBC Tuesday Night at the Movies
- The ABC Wednesday Night Movie
- The CBS Thursday Night Movies
- The CBS Friday Night Movies
- NBC Saturday Night at the Movies
The popularity of these movie broadcasts also provided a windfall profit to the movie studios, since competitive bidding for popular movies raised the price for broadcast rights. This, in turn, made it cost effective to produce "made for TV" movies.
This trend continued and reached its peak in the mid-1970s, when there were 11 or more movies in the weekly schedule - though some of the "movies" (like Columbo) were actually just a regular television series with longer episodes.
Announcers
Announcing of opening credits and bumpers was handled mainly out of NBC's Burbank studios. For years, the main announcer was Don Stanley. In later years, he alternated with Donald Rickles and Peggy Taylor. Near the end of Saturday Night at the Movies' run, opening trailers would be handled by members of the network's New York announcing staff, including Fred Collins and Howard Reig, though the Burbank staff announcers still handled bumpers.
Decline and later years
NBC broadcast Saturday Night at the Movies until 1978. Loss of ratings for movie series in the late 1970s has been attributed to increased competition from cable television, especially pay movie channels that were able to show the movies uncut and without commercial interruptions.
The NBC Saturday Night Movie has been periodically broadcast on the namesake American television network on Saturdays 8:00 p.m.–11:00 p.m. since 2000. It commonly consists of a theatrical release which has been edited for time and format and may be introduced by a host, originally Ryan Seacrest. NBC's prime time Nielsen Ratings and thus advertising revenue made the relatively inexpensive offering of a movie appealing, particularly after the spectacular failure of the XFL. It is frequently preempted for television specials.
Occasionally, any one of the three commercial networks still observes the time-honored custom of showing a recent box office and critical smash as a movie special. This pre-empts regular programming, as CBS did on Sunday, May 20, 2007, with a three-hour commercial network telecast of Million Dollar Baby. Such showings often occur during sweeps, in an effort to boost a network's viewer ratings.
References
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