ABC Movie of the Week

American TV anthology series (1969–75)

The ABC Movie of the Week was an American weekly television anthology series featuring made for TV movies that aired on the ABC network in various permutations from 1969 to 1975.

In the 1960s, movie studios viewed television as a second rate medium but also as a threat to their theatrical revenue, so they charged high fees for the privilege to broadcast their films. The networks experimented with having films made specifically for TV to lower expenses. NBC created the first weekly umbrella for such films with their World Premiere Movie in 1966, running in a two hour time slot. Until the late 1960s, ABC ran a distant third behind rivals CBS and NBC, leading to jokes about it coming in fourth among the three networks or about its acronym meaning "Almost Broadcasting Company". Desperation and a looser corporate structure allowed ABC to consider plans that the other two networks would not. Barry Diller, then a junior executive at ABC and later a co founder of the Fox network, is often cited as the creator of the Movie of the Week (MotW), although the concept was actually originated by producer Roy Huggins. Huggins reasoned that many older theatrical films ran shorter than 90 minutes so requiring a 120 minute time slot was unnecessary. His proposal was rejected by NBC and CBS but became the subject of a cover story in the March 21, 1968 issue of Variety magazine. ABC executives read the article and contacted Huggins, who did not want to sell the idea but could produce the series through Universal, where he was under contract. Universal demanded a larger budget than ABC wanted to spend, as well as the exclusive right to produce all future TV movies for ABC, conditions that pushed ABC to control production on their own, purchasing films from various studios and production companies. ABC consoled Huggins by allowing him to produce several films, including The Young Country, precursor to Alias Smith and Jones. Michael Karol repeated the claim in his book The ABC Movie of the Week Companion: A Loving Tribute to the Classic Series that the Movie of the Week was Diller's idea, but this was based on hearsay. The shorter format allowed a smaller budget than two hour TV movies. At $350,000 per film, it was less than half the budget of NBC's World Premiere movies. It featured the work of producers like Aaron Spelling, David Wolper and Harve Bennett (all of whom later developed hit series of their own), and was produced by different production companies such as Bing Crosby Productions and the network's own ABC Circle Films. Spelling was particularly prolific, producing films under his own credit as well as through Spelling Goldberg Productions and Thomas Spelling Productions (partly owned by Danny Thomas). The MotW provided ABC with a ratings hit and, along with Monday Night Football, helped establish the network as a legitimate competitor to rivals CBS and NBC. The films themselves varied in quality and were often escapist or sensationalistic in nature (suspense, horror and melodrama were staples), but some were critically well received. For example, Duel (1971), based on a Richard Matheson short story from Playboy, was director Steven Spielberg's first feature film, catapulting his career and enabling him to move from television to theatrical films. ABC earned four Emmys, a Peabody Award and citations from the NAACP and American Cancer Society for an airing of Brian's Song in 1972. The 1971–72 season of the series finished as the fifth highest rated series of the year. The series was documented by Michael Karol in his 2005 book, The ABC Movie of the Week Companion: A Loving Tribute to the Classic Series, which was updated in 2008 , and by Michael McKenna in The ABC Movie of the Week: Big Movies for the Small Screen.

The MotW originally aired on Tuesday nights at 8:30 pm Eastern/7:30 pm Central. Established series The Mod Squad acted as a lead in from 7:30 to 8:30, bringing the younger demographic. The shorter running time of the film freed the 10 p. m. time slot for a full 60 minute program, initially Marcus Welby, M. D. during the first season. Starting earlier at 8:30 could also prevent viewers from switching to competing movies at 9:00. Beginning with the 1971 season, ABC added a second MotW on Saturday night and adjusted the titles of the shows to the Movie of the Week and Movie of the Weekend. The following season, the Saturday installment was moved to Wednesday night, and the titles were adjusted to Tuesday Movie of the Week and Wednesday Movie of the Week. During the 1973–74 season, ABC added another movie on Saturday nights to their schedule, this time titled the ABC Suspense Movie, and usually consisting of thriller, mystery and horror type films (some of which were reruns of movies which had originally aired as Movies of the Week).

The title sequence was designed by Harry Marks and animated by Douglas Trumbull using the slit scan process that he had created for 2001: A Space Odyssey. The accompanying theme music was an orchestral version of "Nikki", a song composed by Burt Bacharach and named for his daughter. The theme was chosen by Marks and arranged by Harry Betts. After that, ABC's made for TV movies were aired either as stand alone specials or shown in time slots that included both original and theatrical movie presentations, notably the ABC Friday Night Movie and the ABC Sunday Night Movie. The Tuesday Movie of the Week would later be incorporated as part of ABC Late Night, a replacement of ABC's Wide World of Entertainment that ran from 1976 to 1982; the late night version would mainly feature repeats of movies, both made for television and traditional theatrical releases, that were previously seen on ABC and other networks. ABC continued to premiere new TV films on Sunday nights in prime time until 2005. During the 1970s, ABC's local owned and operated stations (in a few of the nation's biggest cities; at the time, they all broadcast on channel 7) featured The 4:30 Movie on weekday afternoons (the actual time varied by city, but generally after ABC's morning/midday game shows and soap operas); it featured mainly major Hollywood theatrical releases, but some installments of the Movie of the Week were also rebroadcast here.

Season Episodes First aired Last aired Rank Nielsen rating 1 25 September 23, 1969 March 17, 1970 #22 20.9 2 25 September 22, 1970 April 6, 1971 #6 25.1 3 44 September 14, 1971 March 7, 1972 #5 25.5 4 47 September 12, 1972 March 21, 1973 #17 (Tuesday) #22 (Wednesday) 21.4 (Tue) 20.0 (Wed) 6 43 September 10, 1974 May 14, 1975 #47 (Tuesday) #38 (Wednesday) 17.6 (Tue) 18.7 (Wed)