NBC Saturday Night at the Movies
Encyclopedia
NBC Saturday Night at the Movies, was the first continuing weekly prime time network television series to show relatively recent feature film
s from major studios in color. The series premiered in September 1961.
and in color, so older black-and-white Academy ratio
films had lost much of their value to the theatres. By the late-1950s, with the exception of some of Walt Disney
's films and The Wizard of Oz
(1939), these older films had become standard fare for independent stations and the non-prime time schedules of the network affiliates.
A short-lived black-and-white
ABC-TV
series entitled Famous Film Festival
had premiered in 1956, but had shown British films made in the 1940s. They were shown in a ninety-minute time slot, which meant that the films had to either be severely edited or shown in two parts. NBC Saturday Night at the Movies was the first network movie anthology series to run two hours (and occasionally longer), so that the films could be shown in one evening.
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
- Lauren Bacall
- Betty Grable
film How to Marry a Millionaire
, presented "In Living Technicolor". Some of the other movies shown were The Day the Earth Stood Still (March 3, 1962) and No Highway in the Sky
(March 24, 1962). Many of these films, having been made in Cinemascope
, a Fox specialty from 1953 to 1967, had to be severely panned-and-scanned
for fullscreen television viewing (which was the only kind of television aspect ratio in existence then). Because commercial breaks were shorter until the late 1960s, 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 three major commercial networks did not show worn-out 16 mm prints of films as was then the usual practice on local TV stations. The films aired on the network movie anthology series (as well as annually-telecast specials such as The Wizard of Oz) were invariably in excellent condition. With the advent of cable television, VHS, and DVD, the idea of always showing films - even very old ones - in pristine, remastered condition on television has become the norm, but aside from films shown on the three major networks, this was simply not done prior to the 1980s. Up until then, local stations had even had to settle for inexpensive 16 mm prints of such relatively recent films as Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison
(1957) or Prince Valiant
(1954), rather than good "theater-quality" prints.
s would soon be created by NBC, along with some help from now-sister company 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 future US President Ronald Reagan
, but NBC deemed the film too violent for television, so it was released in theater
s 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
(1957), a 1960 Hallmark Hall of Fame
Macbeth
filmed in color on location in Scotland
, and, as early as 1954, a filmed musical version in color of Charles Dickens
's A Christmas Carol
telecast on CBS's Shower of Stars
, 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
.
, then a distant third in the ratings, immediately added another movie series, Hollywood Special, as a mid-season replacement; however, the series, under its new title The ABC Sunday Night Movie
, did not become a regular television program until 1964. 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. Other networks would soon follow.
Soon there were movie anthology programs for every night of the week:
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.
Fox Network had also begun to air films in prime time, as the network has gained more and more popularity with its all-time longest running hit, The Simpsons
, but like the "Big Three" networks, Fox also has since cancelled its movie series.
As opposed to ABC, NBC and CBS, Fox aired its movies primarily on Tuesday nights at 7:00 Eastern, though sometimes due to a news broadcast or game, the day of a broadcast might have been changed.
and bumper
s for NBC Saturday Night at the Movies 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
, Peggy Taylor
and Victor Bozeman
. Near the end of Saturday Night at the Movies' run, opening credits (for the series, not for the films themselves) 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. At the beginning the announcer would say something like : "NBC Saturday Night at the Movies, a series featuring motion pictures appearing on television for the first time. Tonight...", or "NBC Saturday Night at the Movies, the television series which each week brings you the finest in recent motion pictures. Tonight..." Following this, the film's title and its stars would be identified. The program would then go into a commercial, and then the film would begin. The opening and closing credits for the actual films would be shown exactly as they appeared when the films were shown in theatres, not in a revised format as was done on The ABC Sunday Night Movie.
As with the other movie anthology series of the time, there was no host for the program. Although an announcer's voice was heard at the beginning, the program itself simply consisted of the showing of the film and perhaps a movie trailer afterward.
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. from 2000 on, and originally had interstitials hosted by Ryan Seacrest
. It was replaced by coverage of the XFL
in 2001, but returned the next year without host continuity, and by 2006 the network decided to only occasionally air theatrical films during sweeps weeks in various timeslots, so the Saturday movie has been completely discontinued. In 2009 and 2010, Wal-Mart
and Procter & Gamble
purchased some Friday and Saturday night time on NBC and Fox to broadcast television films they produced such as The Jensen Project
, though the ratings for these films were well below regular programming.
, and as ABC
did on September 14, 2009 with the first commercial television showing of Dreamgirls
. Such showings often occur during sweeps, in an effort to boost a network's viewer ratings.
On March 22, 2009, ABC took the unusual step of telecasting the film Spy Kids 2 as a television special, at the early hour of 4:00 P.M., even earlier than the annual telecasts of The Wizard of Oz during the early-to-mid 1960s (Oz was usually telecast at 6:00 P.M., E.S.T. during those years). However this is due to ABC reducing the amount of time buys
from outside sports organizations to air Sunday afternoon sports programming when ABC does not broadcast golf, NBA basketball or stock car racing, and to provide alternate programming to sports offered on other networks. It may also be done in order to exhaust purchases made in the early to mid 2000's of films which are unlikely to be widely viewed in primetime, with the continued fading of films in network scheduling.
Feature film
In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...
s from major studios in color. The series premiered in September 1961.
Background and early history
Previously, movies on television were usually low-cost B films or older films that the major studios or producers no longer found suitable for theatrical presentation. Movie audiences had grown to expect films to be shown in widescreenWidescreen
Widescreen images are a variety of aspect ratios used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than the standard 1.37:1 Academy aspect ratio provided by 35mm film....
and in color, so older black-and-white Academy ratio
Academy ratio
The Academy ratio of 1.375:1 is an aspect ratio of a frame of 35mm film when used with 4-perf pulldown. It was standardized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as the standard film aspect ratio in 1932, although similar-sized ratios were used as early as 1928.The Academy ratio is...
films had lost much of their value to the theatres. By the late-1950s, with the exception of some of Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
's films and The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)
The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs...
(1939), these older films had become standard fare for independent stations and the non-prime time schedules of the network affiliates.
A short-lived black-and-white
Black-and-white
Black-and-white, often abbreviated B/W or B&W, is a term referring to a number of monochrome forms in visual arts.Black-and-white as a description is also something of a misnomer, for in addition to black and white, most of these media included varying shades of gray...
ABC-TV
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
series entitled Famous Film Festival
Famous Film Festival
Famous Film Festival was an American television prime-time movie series that aired Sunday nights from 7:30-9:00 pm on ABC during the 1955-56 television season.In 1955, ABC obtained the rights to broadcast 35 British movie titles...
had premiered in 1956, but had shown British films made in the 1940s. They were shown in a ninety-minute time slot, which meant that the films had to either be severely edited or shown in two parts. NBC Saturday Night at the Movies was the first network movie anthology series to run two hours (and occasionally longer), so that the films could be shown in one evening.
For their 1961 television season, NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
obtained the rights to broadcast 31 post-1950 movie titles from 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
. On September 23, 1961, Saturday Night at the Movies premiered with the 1953 Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
- Lauren Bacall
Lauren Bacall
Lauren Bacall is an American film and stage actress and model, known for her distinctive husky voice and sultry looks.She first emerged as leading lady in the Humphrey Bogart film To Have And Have Not and continued on in the film noir genre, with appearances in The Big Sleep and Dark Passage ,...
- Betty Grable
Betty Grable
Elizabeth Ruth "Betty" Grable was an American actress, dancer and singer.Her iconic bathing suit photo made her the number-one pin-up girl of the World War II era. It was later included in the LIFE magazine project "100 Photos that Changed the World"...
film How to Marry a Millionaire
How to Marry a Millionaire
How to Marry a Millionaire is a 1953 romantic comedy film made by 20th Century Fox, directed by Jean Negulesco and produced and written by Nunnally Johnson. The screenplay was based on the plays The Greeks Had a Word for It by Zoe Akins and Loco by Dale Eunson and Katherine Albert. The music score...
, presented "In Living Technicolor". Some of the other movies shown were The Day the Earth Stood Still (March 3, 1962) and No Highway in the Sky
No Highway in the Sky
No Highway in the Sky is a 1951 British disaster film directed by Henry Koster and starring James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich...
(March 24, 1962). Many of these films, having been made in Cinemascope
CinemaScope
CinemaScope was an anamorphic lens series used for shooting wide screen movies from 1953 to 1967. Its creation in 1953, by the president of 20th Century-Fox, marked the beginning of the modern anamorphic format in both principal photography and movie projection.The anamorphic lenses theoretically...
, a Fox specialty from 1953 to 1967, had to be severely panned-and-scanned
Pan and scan
Pan and scan is a method of adjusting widescreen film images so that they can be shown within the proportions of a standard definition 4:3 aspect ratio television screen, often cropping off the sides of the original widescreen image to focus on the composition's most important aspects...
for fullscreen television viewing (which was the only kind of television aspect ratio in existence then). Because commercial breaks were shorter until the late 1960s, 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 three major commercial networks did not show worn-out 16 mm prints of films as was then the usual practice on local TV stations. The films aired on the network movie anthology series (as well as annually-telecast specials such as The Wizard of Oz) were invariably in excellent condition. With the advent of cable television, VHS, and DVD, the idea of always showing films - even very old ones - in pristine, remastered condition on television has become the norm, but aside from films shown on the three major networks, this was simply not done prior to the 1980s. Up until then, local stations had even had to settle for inexpensive 16 mm prints of such relatively recent films as Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison
Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison
Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison is a 1957 CinemaScope film which tells the story of two people stranded on an island in the Pacific Ocean during World War II....
(1957) or Prince Valiant
Prince Valiant (1954 film)
Prince Valiant is a 1954 adventure film in Technicolor and Cinemascope, based on the comic strip of the same name by Hal Foster. A young man seeks to join the Knights of the Round Table in order to restore his father to his own kingship, and uncovers a plot against King Arthur.-Plot summary:The...
(1954), rather than good "theater-quality" prints.
The birth of the "made for TV movie"
With the demand for movies increasing during the 1960s, made-for-television filmTelevision movie
A television film is a feature film that is a television program produced for and originally distributed by a television network, in contrast to...
s would soon be created by NBC, along with some help from now-sister company Universal
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
. The first, made during the 1963–64 season, was to have been a new version of Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
's The Killers
The Killers (1964 film)
The Killers, sometimes marketed as Ernest Hemingway's The Killers, is a 1964 crime film released by Universal Studios. It is the second Hollywood adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's short story of the same name, following a version made in 1946 starring Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner. It was directed...
with Lee Marvin
Lee Marvin
Lee Marvin was an American film actor. Known for his gravelly voice, white hair and 6' 2" stature, Marvin at first did supporting roles, mostly villains, soldiers and other hardboiled characters, but after winning an Academy Award for Best Actor for his dual roles in Cat Ballou , he landed more...
, Angie Dickinson
Angie Dickinson
Angie Dickinson is an American actress. She has appeared in more than fifty films, including Rio Bravo, Ocean's Eleven, Dressed to Kill and Pay It Forward, and starred on television as Sergeant Suzanne "Pepper" Anderson on the 1970s crime series Police Woman.-Early life:Dickinson, the second of...
and future US President Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
, but NBC deemed the film too violent for television, so it was released in theater
Movie theater
A movie theater, cinema, movie house, picture theater, film theater is a venue, usually a building, for viewing motion pictures ....
s instead. It was Reagan's last film before he entered politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
.
Although there had been filmed feature-length television specials such as The Pied Piper of Hamelin
The Pied Piper of Hamelin (1957 film)
The Pied Piper of Hamelin is an American ninety-minute musical color television special originally shown by NBC on November 26, 1957, as their Thanksgiving Day offering for that year...
(1957), a 1960 Hallmark Hall of Fame
Hallmark Hall of Fame
Hallmark Hall of Fame is an anthology program on American television, sponsored by Hallmark Cards, a Kansas City based greeting card company. The second longest-running television program in the history of television, it has a historically long run, beginning in 1951 and continuing into 2011...
Macbeth
Macbeth (1960 film)
Macbeth is a 1960 film adaptation of the William Shakespeare play. This, the second Hallmark Hall of Fame series teleplay of Macbeth was, like the 1954 live version, also directed by George Schaefer, and also starred Maurice Evans and Judith Anderson...
filmed in color on location in Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
, and, as early as 1954, a filmed musical version in color of Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
's A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol is a novella by English author Charles Dickens first published by Chapman & Hall on 17 December 1843. The story tells of sour and stingy Ebenezer Scrooge's ideological, ethical, and emotional transformation after the supernatural visits of Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of...
telecast on CBS's Shower of Stars
Shower of Stars
Shower of Stars is an American variety television series broadcast in the United States from 1954 to 1958 by CBS. The series was also known as Chrysler Shower of Stars. Unusually at the time for CBS, the series was telecast in color.-Overview:...
, the film generally regarded as the first made-for-television movie was See How They Run, directed by David Lowell Rich
David Lowell Rich
David Lowell Rich is an American film director and producer. He has directed nearly 100 films and TV episodes between 1950 and 1987...
and starring John Forsythe
John Forsythe
John Forsythe was an American stage, television and film actor. Forsythe starred in three television series, spanning four decades and three genres: as single playboy father Bentley Gregg in the sitcom Bachelor Father ; as the unseen millionaire Charles Townsend on the crime drama Charlie's...
and Senta Berger
Senta Berger
Senta Berger is an Austrian film, stage and television actress, producer and author.Regarded by critics as one of the greatest actresses of the post-war period, and frequently named as one of the leading German-speaking actresses in polls, Berger has received many award nominations for her acting...
. 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
Fame Is the Name of the Game
Fame Is the Name of the Game is an American TV-movie, directed by Stuart Rosenberg, that aired on NBC and served as the pilot episode of the subsequent series The Name of the Game. The film stars Tony Franciosa as an investigative journalist and presents the screen debut of 20-year-old Susan...
(1966), which ultimately served as the pilot episode for the 1968–71 series The Name of the Game
The Name of the Game (TV series)
The Name of the Game is an American television series starring Tony Franciosa, Gene Barry, and Robert Stack that ran from 1968 to 1971 on NBC, totaling 76 episodes of 90 minutes. It was a pioneering wheel series, setting the stage for the likes of The Bold Ones and the NBC Mystery Movie in the 1970s...
.
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. ABCAmerican Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
, then a distant third in the ratings, immediately added another movie series, Hollywood Special, as a mid-season replacement; however, the series, under its new title The ABC Sunday Night Movie
The ABC Sunday Night Movie
The ABC Sunday Night Movie is a television program that aired on Sunday nights, first for a brief time in 1962 under the title Hollywood Special . It then began airing regularly under its more commonly known title from 1964 to 1998, on ABC...
, did not become a regular television program until 1964. CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
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. Other networks would soon follow.
Soon there were movie anthology programs for every night of the week:
- The ABC Sunday Night MovieThe ABC Sunday Night MovieThe ABC Sunday Night Movie is a television program that aired on Sunday nights, first for a brief time in 1962 under the title Hollywood Special . It then began airing regularly under its more commonly known title from 1964 to 1998, on ABC...
- The NBC Monday MovieThe NBC Monday MovieThe NBC Monday Movie was a television anthology series of films scheduled every Monday night from 1963 to 1999 on NBC. It was referred to as NBC Monday Night at the Movies prior to the mid-1980s...
- NBC Tuesday Night at the Movies
- The ABC Wednesday Night Movie
- The CBS Wednesday Night Movies
- The CBS Thursday Night Movies
- The CBS Friday Night Movies
- The CBS Saturday Night Movies
- NBC Saturday Night at the Movies
- The CBS Sunday Night 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
Television movie
A television film is a feature film that is a television program produced for and originally distributed by a television network, in contrast to...
.
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.
Fox Network had also begun to air films in prime time, as the network has gained more and more popularity with its all-time longest running hit, The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
, but like the "Big Three" networks, Fox also has since cancelled its movie series.
As opposed to ABC, NBC and CBS, Fox aired its movies primarily on Tuesday nights at 7:00 Eastern, though sometimes due to a news broadcast or game, the day of a broadcast might have been changed.
Announcers
Announcing of opening creditsOpening credits
In a motion picture, television program, or video game, the opening credits are shown at the very beginning and list the most important members of the production. They are now usually shown as text superimposed on a blank screen or static pictures, or sometimes on top of action in the show. There...
and bumper
Commercial bumper
In broadcasting, a commercial bumper, ident bumper or break-bumper is a brief announcement, usually two to 15 seconds that can contain a voice over, placed between a pause in the program and its commercial break, and vice versa...
s for NBC Saturday Night at the Movies was handled mainly out of NBC's Burbank studios. For years, the main announcer
Announcer
An announcer is a presenter who makes "announcements" in an audio medium or a physical location.-Television and other media:Some announcers work in television production , radio or filmmaking, usually providing narrations, news updates, station identification, or an introduction of a product in...
was Don Stanley
Don Stanley
Donald Stanley Uglum , known professionally as Don Stanley, was an American radio and television announcer....
. In later years, he alternated with Donald Rickles
Donald Rickles (announcer)
Donald Newton Rickles was an American radio and television announcer, news anchor, and actor.Born in Portland, Oregon, Rickles began his announcing career at the age of 11 at KBPS in Portland. Later he was chief announcer for KUSC-FM in Los Angeles, California...
, Peggy Taylor
Peggy Taylor
Peggy M. Taylor was an American singer and actress who later became a radio and television announcer.-Biography:...
and Victor Bozeman
Victor Bozeman
Victor Emanuel Bozeman was an American television announcer, voice-over artist, and actor.In the 1950s, Bozeman was a disc jockey at WLIB in New York City...
. Near the end of Saturday Night at the Movies' run, opening credits (for the series, not for the films themselves) would be handled by members of the network's New York announcing staff, including Fred Collins and Howard Reig
Howard Reig
Howard Reig was an American radio and television announcer. His last name was pronounced "reeg."-Personal life:...
, though the Burbank staff announcers still handled bumpers. At the beginning the announcer would say something like : "NBC Saturday Night at the Movies, a series featuring motion pictures appearing on television for the first time. Tonight...", or "NBC Saturday Night at the Movies, the television series which each week brings you the finest in recent motion pictures. Tonight..." Following this, the film's title and its stars would be identified. The program would then go into a commercial, and then the film would begin. The opening and closing credits for the actual films would be shown exactly as they appeared when the films were shown in theatres, not in a revised format as was done on The ABC Sunday Night Movie.
As with the other movie anthology series of the time, there was no host for the program. Although an announcer's voice was heard at the beginning, the program itself simply consisted of the showing of the film and perhaps a movie trailer afterward.
Decline and later years
NBC broadcast Saturday Night at the Movies until 1978. It ran until at least October 28. Some of the other movie series on television were also cancelled by the end of the decade. However, some continued well into the 1980s and even beyond. Changes in television viewing habits, though, seemed to spell the end for many of these series. Loss of ratings for them 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. Other factors that have led to the decline of the TV network movie presentations include the advent of home video and video rental, pay-per-view and video on demand.The NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
Saturday Night Movie has been periodically broadcast on the namesake
Namesake
Namesake is a term used to characterize a person, place, thing, quality, action, state, or idea that has the same, or a similar, name to another....
American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
television network
Television network
A television network is a telecommunications network for distribution of television program content, whereby a central operation provides programming to many television stations or pay TV providers. Until the mid-1980s, television programming in most countries of the world was dominated by a small...
on Saturdays 8:00 p.m.–11:00 p.m. from 2000 on, and originally had interstitials hosted by Ryan Seacrest
Ryan Seacrest
Ryan John Seacrest is an American radio personality, television host, network producer and voice actor. He is the host of On Air with Ryan Seacrest, a nationally syndicated Top 40 radio show that airs on KIIS-FM in Los Angeles and throughout the United States and Canada on Premiere Radio Networks,...
. It was replaced by coverage of the XFL
XFL
The XFL was a professional American football league that played for one season in 2001. The league was founded by Vince McMahon, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of WWE...
in 2001, but returned the next year without host continuity, and by 2006 the network decided to only occasionally air theatrical films during sweeps weeks in various timeslots, so the Saturday movie has been completely discontinued. In 2009 and 2010, Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. , branded as Walmart since 2008 and Wal-Mart before then, is an American public multinational corporation that runs chains of large discount department stores and warehouse stores. The company is the world's 18th largest public corporation, according to the Forbes Global 2000...
and Procter & Gamble
Procter & Gamble
Procter & Gamble is a Fortune 500 American multinational corporation headquartered in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio and manufactures a wide range of consumer goods....
purchased some Friday and Saturday night time on NBC and Fox to broadcast television films they produced such as The Jensen Project
The Jensen Project
The Jensen Project is the second in a series of a TV movies produced by Procter & Gamble and Wal-Mart aimed at families. The movie featured embedded marketing for the Kinect, a motion sensor add-on to the Xbox 360, several months before the product's launch. Ratings for the July 16, 2010 airing on...
, though the ratings for these films were well below regular programming.
Recent commercial telecasts of films
Occasionally, any one of the major 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 BabyMillion Dollar Baby
Million Dollar Baby is a 2004 American sports drama film directed, co-produced, and scored by Clint Eastwood and starring Eastwood, Hilary Swank, and Morgan Freeman...
, and as ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
did on September 14, 2009 with the first commercial television showing of Dreamgirls
Dreamgirls (film)
Dreamgirls is a 2006 musical drama film, directed by Bill Condon and jointly produced and released by DreamWorks and Paramount Pictures. The film debuted in three special road show engagements beginning December 15, 2006 before its nationwide release on December 25, 2006...
. Such showings often occur during sweeps, in an effort to boost a network's viewer ratings.
On March 22, 2009, ABC took the unusual step of telecasting the film Spy Kids 2 as a television special, at the early hour of 4:00 P.M., even earlier than the annual telecasts of The Wizard of Oz during the early-to-mid 1960s (Oz was usually telecast at 6:00 P.M., E.S.T. during those years). However this is due to ABC reducing the amount of time buys
Brokered programming
Brokered programming is a form of broadcast content in which the show's producer pays a radio or television station for air time, rather than exchanging programming for pay or the opportunity to play spot commercials...
from outside sports organizations to air Sunday afternoon sports programming when ABC does not broadcast golf, NBA basketball or stock car racing, and to provide alternate programming to sports offered on other networks. It may also be done in order to exhaust purchases made in the early to mid 2000's of films which are unlikely to be widely viewed in primetime, with the continued fading of films in network scheduling.