The ABC Sunday Night Movie
The ABC Sunday Night Movie | |
---|---|
Genre | Movies |
Country of origin | United States |
No. of seasons | 36 |
Production | |
Running time | 120–180 minutes (with commercials) |
Original release | |
Network | ABC |
Release | April 8, 1962 August 2, 1998 | –
Related | |
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The ABC Sunday Night Movie is a
The ABC Sunday Night Movie was replaced in 1998 with
History
Encouraged by the ratings success on NBC's Saturday Night at the Movies, ABC initially purchased 15 United Artists films released in the late 1950s for its April 1962 premiere.[1] United Artists Television also provided some short featurettes promoting upcoming United Artists cinema releases to fill out some films that ended before the two hour time slot finished.
Edits for television
The program presented theatrical feature films airing on TV for the first time. The feature films were edited for content, to remove objectionable material, and for time - one such instance was the first network telecast in 1962[2] of John Huston's 1956 film Moby Dick, a Warner Bros. film which runs 117 minutes uncut, and yet was shown in a two-hour time slot with commercials. In many cases, however, the broadcast was expanded from two to two-and-a-half hours to fit a film's longer running time, as in the two 1966 network telecasts of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel (a 1956 film not to be confused with the 1967 videotaped television adaptation of the musical, also broadcast by ABC). The first major network showing of Superman in 1982 was broadcast in two parts with previously unused footage. Extra footage was also added to the ABC broadcast of Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1983, Superman II in 1984 and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in 1985.
Because the concept of
James Bond franchise
In 1972, ABC bought the broadcasting rights to the
ABC made edits to the Bond films for violence, sexual content, and so that the films would fit in the time allotted, but perhaps the most controversial of these was the re-edit of the 1969 film On Her Majesty's Secret Service broadcast on the ABC Monday Night Movie. Broadcast on February 16 and February 23, 1976, the edit involved the film being split into two for a two-night broadcast while including a voiceover (primarily for the first showing) meant to sound like George Lazenby that starts with the ski chase scene before including flashbacks to prior scenes.[3] A subsequent re-airing of the film years later showed it in a three-hour time slot with no edits.[4]
ABC held the rights to the James Bond films until 1990, when
ABC Sunday Movie Special
Occasionally, The ABC Sunday Night Movie would telecast what they termed an ABC Sunday Movie Special when a film presentation was over three hours or overflowed prime time. When the movie in question was a family film, the telecasts would begin at an earlier hour, so that the film would end at around 11:00 p.m, enabling younger viewers to watch without having to stay up too late. The Movie Specials invariably consisted of
ABC would occasionally telecast Movie Specials on other days of the week as well, among them Fiddler on the Roof, and Godspell (which was shown on network television as a Thanksgiving season special in 1974).
Method of presenting films throughout the 1960s
Beginning in 1965, The ABC Sunday Night Movie used a rather unusual method of presenting the films that movie series on other networks did not use. Except on rare occasions, such as the aforementioned Movie Specials, or films which already had a pre-credits sequence that led directly into the main title and so could not be altered, the opening credits of the particular film in question generally would not be shown until after the movie had ended. Instead, a teaser from the film was shown, whereupon an offscreen announcer (e.g. Joel Crager) would say the name of the film and its stars, and then the credit The ABC Sunday Night Movie would appear. A commercial would then follow, and when the program started up again, one would see the screenwriter and the director's names respectively - superimposed over the film's opening scene in credits manufactured by ABC. At film's end, another commercial would follow, after which, somewhat anti-climactically, the movie's actual opening credits, together with the studio logo, would then be presented exactly as they were originally made, as if the film were starting up again.
The ABC Sunday Night Movie was also famous in the mid 1970s for its theme music and brightly colored marquee. The opening has been parodied on the G4 network under the title Movies That Don't Suck.[5]
Other nights and methods of presentation
From 1968 to 1970, ABC ran a concurrent movie series on Wednesday nights, under the title The ABC Wednesday Night Movie.
A Tuesday night
From 1975 to 1983 (and again, briefly, in 1999) ABC ran a concurrent movie series on Friday nights, under the title The ABC Friday Night Movie.
Other concurrent movie series during that time also aired on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.
During the 1980s, films with more mature and politically charged themes, such as The Day After and Consenting Adult (homosexuality) aired under the ABC Theater banner.
Beginning in 1999, a Saturday night variant on the formula began, and has been somewhat of a ratings favorite. However, and more importantly nowadays, the ratings have varied from week to week. Since 1999, The
Announcers
For many years, until the early 1980s, the announcer for all of ABC's movie shows was network staff announcer Joel Crager.[6] Afterwards, the duties would be handled first by Ernie Anderson, and then others, including Gary Owens (with the announcer depending on the film's tone; Owens would do so for comedies).
Decline due to the advent of cable networks
The advent of such
Ratings for selected films
Date | Movie | Household ratings or viewers |
---|---|---|
1962-04-08 | Moby Dick | Rating: 7.3 |
1966-09-25 | The Bridge on the River Kwai | Rating: 38.3 |
1967-03-26 | The Robe | Rating: 31.0 |
1968-06-02 | Walk on the Wild Side | Rating: 0.70 |
1969-03-09 | The Cardinal | Rating: 7.1 |
1970-01-04 | The Naked Prey | Rating: 6.6 |
1970-01-11 | House on Greenapple Road
|
Rating: 7.1 |
1970-01-18 | Woman Times Seven | Rating: 6.8 |
1970-01-25 | Hombre | Rating: 7.4 |
1970-02-01 | In Like Flint | Rating: 7.3 |
1970-02-08 | The Oscar | Rating: 7.6 |
1970-02-15 | Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round | Rating: 7.1 |
1970-02-22 | The Family Jewels | Rating: 4.9 |
1970-03-01 | The Sons of Katie Elder | Rating: 7.0 |
1970-03-08 | Dial Hot Line | Rating: 7.4 |
1970-03-15 | Up from the Beach | Rating: 6.3 |
1970-03-29 | The Chase | Rating: 7.5 |
1970-04-05 | The Lonely Man | Rating: 7.3 |
1970-04-12 | Scared Stiff | Rating: 7.7 |
1970-04-19 | Fall of the Roman Empire | Rating: 6.4 |
1970-04-26 | Duel of the Titans | Rating: 7.3 |
1970-05-03 | Night Into Morning | Rating: 6.8 |
1970-05-10 | The Blob | Rating: 6.4 |
1970-05-17 | It! The Terror from Beyond Space | Rating: 6.1 |
1970-05-24 | Code Two | Rating: 6.4 |
1970-05-31 | Glory Alley | Rating: 6.0 |
1970-06-07 | Penelope | Rating: 6.3 |
1970-07-05 | Rage | Rating: 6.3 |
1970-07-19 | Skullduggery | Rating: 4.7 |
1970-07-26 | The Girls On The Beach | Rating: 5.2 |
1972-10-01 | Love Story | Rating: 42.3 |
1972-11-12 | True Grit | Rating: 38.9 |
1972-11-19 | Patton | Rating: 38.5 |
1973-02-18 | The Ten Commandments | Rating: 33.2 |
1973-11-11 | Airport | Rating: 42.3 |
1974-10-27 | The Poseidon Adventure | Rating: 39.0 |
1976-01-18 | Jeremiah Johnson | Rating: 37.5 |
1976-02-29 | The Sound of Music | Rating: 33.6 |
1979-11-04 | Jaws
|
Rating: 39.1 |
1982-10-31 | The Wild Women of Chastity Gulch | Rating: 17 |
1983-11-20 | The Day After | Rating: 46 |
1989-11-26 | Blind Witness | Rating: 16.3 |
1990-03-11 | Brewster Place | Viewers: 13.9 million |
1990-03-18 | Love and Lies | Viewers: 16.8 million |
1991-05-12 | An Inconvenient Woman (Part 1 of 2) | Viewers: 16.6 million |
1993-10-10 | Shameful Secrets | Viewers: 18.1 million |
1997-02-16 | ...First Do No Harm | Viewers: 15.7 million |
1997-09-28 | Two Came Back | Viewers: 13.28 million |
1997-11-02 | Before Women Had Wings | Rating: 18.7 |
1997-12-28 | I Love Trouble | Viewers: 17.6 million |
2001-02-11 | Dr. Dolittle
|
Viewers: 15.6 million |
2001-11-11 | Saving Private Ryan | Viewers: 17.9 million |
2002-01-27 | Mouse Hunt | Viewers: 10.4 million |
2002-11-24 | The Pennsylvania Miners' Story | Viewers: 13.2 million |
2002-12-29 | The Sound of Music | Viewers: 11.5 million |
2003-05-11 | E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
|
Viewers: 7.5 million |
2004-02-08 | Pearl Harbor | Viewers: 9.4 million |
2004-05-09 | Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone | Viewers: 11.1 million |
2004-06-20 | Bicentennial Man | Viewers: 5.1 million |
2004-12-05 | Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven | Viewers: 18.6 million |
References
- ^ p. 146 Castleman, Harry & Podrazik, Walter J. Watching TV: Six Decades of American Television Syracuse University Press, 2003
- ^ Moby Dick (1956) - IMDb, retrieved 2020-09-19
- ^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: "On Her Majesty's Secret Service - Clips from 1976 ABC-TV Edit". YouTube.
- ^ "All the Time in the World: Remembering "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" on its 45th Anniversary".
- ^ YouTube video of Movies That Don't Suck intro, which mirrors that of ABC's intro from the 1970s.
- ^ "Joel Crager Profile by Scott Benjamin". www.musicradio77.com. Retrieved 2020-09-19.
External links
- The ABC Sunday Night Movie at IMDb
- ABC Color Movies (since 1961) at Classic Themes
- Episode List: ABC Sunday Night Movies at TV Tango
- Movies on Network TV: 1961 Onward (Part 2) at Radio Discussions