A nice ad from the 5/6/72 TV Guide for The Saturday Night Movie, channel 7’s popular late night Saturday movie showcase program.
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The “Saturday Night Movie” had its debut on or about Oct. 3, 1970; it, plus the “Sunday Night Movie” (a recycling of a title WABC had previously used from 1958 to 1960) and the weeknight “One O’Clock Movie” that aired after Dick Cavett, all replaced “The Best of Broadway” that had run since Sept. 15, 1963, and scored huge ratings wins on at least two occasions, trampling WCBS’s “Late Show” notably in February 1966 when they showed the New York TV premiere of the 1962 “Lolita” with James Mason, Sue Lyon and Peter Sellers; and again on June 24, 1967 when they were the first station in the country to run Hitchcock’s “Psycho” (which was initially syndicated by its original distributor, Paramount, as part of its first film package to local TV stations, “Portfolio I,” before ownership rights transferred to Universal which subsequently made it part of a package that WOR-TV ran for years afterwards).
“Rio Bravo” was part of a 25-film package originally syndicated as “Warner Bros. One” (the first film package of Warners’ films directly syndicated by Warners’ itself) and later renamed “Volume 1-A”; from 1963 to 1970 that package was held by WCBS-TV. In fact, “Rio Bravo” had its New York TV debut on the special, prestigious, highly-rated “Schaefer Award Theatre” (almost like “The Late Show,” only with four commercial interruptions) on Sept. 5, 1965, and made frequent appearances on “The Late Show” through 1970.
Very cool to hear some victories scored by Best Of Broadway over the vaunted Late Show.
The other thing was that in the latter half of the 1960’s, WCBS had some 300 features from Universal-International as originally released between 1949 and 1962 – while some “prestige” titles were among them, far too many were “mindless programmers” that were made quickly. (WCBS was the first home of the last of Abbott & Costello’s movies as first released from 1949 to 1955, plus the “Ma & Pa Kettle” series and the “Francis the Talking Mule” series.) The varied quality of those U-I films may have been a major factor in Schaefer Beer, in late 1968, pulling the plug on their popular and profitable “Schaefer Award Theatre” special presentations, citing a lack of “good movies” to choose from the various packages Channel 2 had in those days. The point is, many of them seemed dull compared with the more “exciting” films and packages WABC scored for airing on “The Best of Broadway” – and even WNBC, with the occasional “top” film aired on “Movie 4” if pre-1965, and the “Saturday Film Festival” starting in 1966 (moved to Sunday in 1967).
Very interesting to hear/read about the battles fought between the stations and the nuances which fueled them.