NBC Saturday Night at the Movies

History

In the early days of television, major studios were reluctant to release their films for broadcast. The movies that did appear were usually low-budget B movies or older black-and-white academy ratio films that had lost theatrical value, with exceptions such as some Walt Disney films and The Wizard of Oz (1939). These films aired on local stations or in non-prime time slots by the late 1950s. By the late 1950s, however, studios began loosening this stance and releasing more recent movies to television.

During the early 1970s, the delay between a film's theatrical release and its television broadcast grew longer than in previous years. A short-lived black-and-white ABC series, Famous Film Festival, premiered in fall 1955 featuring British films from the 1940s and early 1950s. Both series used a ninety-minute time slot, requiring severe editing or two-part presentations. NBC Saturday Night at the Movies was the first network movie anthology series to run two hours (and occasionally longer), allowing almost all films to be shown in one evening, with editing only to remove objectionable content.