Sept. 23, 1969—Mired in last among the then-three TV
networks, ABC, figuring it had little if anything to lose, experimented by
going all-in on a new TV format. The ABC Movie of the Week
premiered with a 90-minute episode, the first of nearly 270 that would air for
the next six years, proving the popularity—and sometimes, the value—of the
made-for-television movie.
The plane-crash drama “Seven in Darkness,” which
kicked off the series, was not, technically, the “first TV movie.” That honor
belonged to “See How They Run,” a John Forsythe that aired in 1964. Through the
next five years, however, attempts to expand on that footprint were fitful.
But the young ABC exec Barry Diller pushed
hard for running a 90-minute TV movie in the same time slot every week. Each
new film would be billed as an event, a “world premiere,” and Diller was
careful to promote the series as "the most costly series in network
history."
Even so, the decision was not as big a gamble as he
suggested. At worst, ABC might win points with critics for its sense of
innovation; at best, it could it could go nowhere but up in the ratings. There
was not enough product to feed the demand for films on the networks.
Moreover, in a 1989 Los Angeles Times article on the made-for-TV phenomenon, Grant Tinker—head of NBC’s West
Coast programming department in the Sixties, then later the network’s
chairman—recalled, “In those days, feature movies were not stopping on cable
first, and so they did well (in the ratings),” said Tinker, who later became
chairman of NBC and now heads up his own production company, GTG Entertainment.
“And these television movies, which we made and cast with theatrical movies in
mind, did comparably well.”
Finally, Diller figured out how to produce TV movies
more cheaply than some in the industry anticipated. When Universal boss Lew
Wasserman said he couldn’t make them for less than $400,000 a picture, Diller
got ABC to establish its own production unit and team up with various producers
such as Aaron Spelling and David L. Wolper, keeping them on a tight budget
throughout.
During its first season, I was, at age 10, still a
bit too young to stay up till its closing credits at 10 am. Moreover, several
films that season—“Daughter of the Mind,” “Along Came a Spider,” “How Awful
About Allan”—looked creepy enough to give me nightmares had I been bold enough
to watch.
But even then, I was curious and lured to the show
by its beguiling theme, “Nikki,” composed three years earlier by Burt Bacharach for his daughter and arranged by Harry Betts as musical
background to the computer-style opening graphics.
From the first, The ABC Movie of the Week succeeded
through five means:
*Offering new, often offbeat, roles to stars of
Hollywood’s “Golden Era.” “Seven in Darkness” offered a good example, with
this innovative form of TV starring “Mr. Television” himself, Milton Berle. The
former comedy star won plaudits for a change-of-pace dramatic role as one of
seven blind survivors of a plane crash. Similar roles outside their wheelbarrow
were accepted by Edward G. Robinson in “The Old Man Who Cried Wolf” and Bing
Crosby in “Dr. Cook’s Garden,” while Ray Milland, Walter Brennan, Myrna Loy and
Gene Tierney also appeared in the series.
*Creating opportunities for rising talents. Before
making an impact on the silver screen in, respectively, The Godfather
and Lady Sings the Blues, James Caan and Billy Dee Williams scored as
NFL teammates and friends in the tearjerker “Brian’s Song.” And, four years
before Jaws, Steven Spielberg demonstrated that he knew how to amp up suspense
with “Duel,’ starring Dennis Weaver as a businessman on a road who realizes
that a diesel-truck driver is out for his blood.
*Using TV
movies to test-run series. Several series got their start as highly rated
episodes of the ABC Movie of the Week: “The
Six Million Dollar Man,” “The Night Stalker,” “Kung Fu,” “Wonder Woman” and
“Starsky and Hutch.”
*Offering a variety of genres. From one week
to the next, viewers might find a different genre: horror (“Don’t Be Afraid of
the Dark”), film noir “Goodbye, My Love”), rom-com (“The Feminist and the Fuzz”),
or family drama (“Go Ask Alice”).
*Highlighting subject matter still too sensitive
to make it to the big screen. Even as the rising youth culture and the decline
of the film industry’s longtime censorship codes led to groundbreaking new
works on the silver screen, some topics were still too sensitive or even
controversial to be dealt with. With so much money on the line, many executives
preferred to play it safe. TV had no such constraints because the expenses of a
TV movie were lower to begin with. ABC capitalized on this freedom with such
fare as “The Ballad of Andy Crocker,” starring Lee Majors as a Vietnam vet
experiencing trouble readjusting to civilian life, and “That Certain Summer,”
with Hal Holbrook and Martin Sheen in a pioneering study of homosexuality.
For several seasons, the ABC Movie of the Week scored well in the ratings and often with
critics (notably with “Brian’s Song” and “That Certain Summer”). The bottom
finally dropped out in 1975, after the network had set aside yet a second night
for TV movies and quality consequently suffered. But by this time, the genre
had been well established, with the other networks—as well as the fledgling HBO—also
taking to the format.
I am sure there are many others besides me who
remember this series and wish, like me, that the networks could offer something
like this again, rather than so many hours of reality TV.
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