CBS Thursday Night Movie


CBS Thursday Night Movie was the Columbia Broadcasting System's first venture into the weekly televising of then-recent theatrical films, debuting at the start of the 1965–1966 season, from 9:00 to 11 p.m.. CBS was the last of the three U.S. major television networks to schedule a regular prime-time array of movies. Unlike its two competitors, CBS had delayed running feature films at the behest of the network's hierarchy. Indeed, as far back as 1960, when Paramount Pictures offered a huge backlog of pre-1948 titles for sale to television for $50 million, James T. Aubrey, program director at CBS, negotiated with the studio to buy the package for the network. Aubrey summed up his thinking this way: "I decided that the feature film was the thing for TV. A $250,000 specially-tailored television show just could not compete with a film that cost three or four million dollars." However, the network's chairman, William Paley, who considered the scheduling of old movies "uncreative", vetoed the Paramount transaction.
It was not until after Aubrey's departure from CBS in early 1965 that Paley finally conceded on the issue and cleared the way for the network to embark on its own prime-time weekly movie broadcast. After completing negotiations with various studios that year, the network acquired exclusive rights to televise a total of 90 titles from Columbia Pictures, United Artists, Paramount, and Warner Brothers—news of which resulted in rumors that the network would actually slate films for two prime-time nights rather than just one. This scheduling addition, however, would not be made until a season later; but reports of further meetings between CBS and Columbia over the acquisition of 20 more titles signaled that the network was now a serious movie-night contender. The Thursday Night Movie thus began on September 16, 1965, with the TV debut of the original The Manchurian Candidate, starring Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey.

Controversy

CBS's new anthology was not to escape notoriety, as the network learned the evening of September 30. During its running of the Jack Lemmon-Kim Novak comedy, The Notorious Landlady, someone at the controls of the film's broadcast inadvertently got the reels mixed up, and it was with some chagrin that a network announcer issued an apology during a commercial break before a substantial portion of the movie was then replayed just to get the continuity back on track. What started out, therefore, as a 2-hour-and-15-minute airing wound up lasting approximately three hours. Then a month later, when the Burt Lancaster film Elmer Gantry was televised with approximately 30 minutes total in various deletions from its original 146-minute length, viewers complained that because of all the omissions, the movie made little sense. In fact, quite a few entries in the Thursday night anthology during the first season were over 2 hours long—and this was without commercial interruptions. These included The Counterfeit Traitor, Parrish, Ocean's 11, Mary, Mary, and Sunrise at Campobello. Before their broadcast, each of these films was cut to accommodate what CBS executives deemed a feasible running-time. Sunrise at Campobello, in particular, suffered a loss of nearly an hour from its footage after the network pared it down to a 2-hour broadcast including advertisements. Even so, CBS's affiliated stations were still forced on more than a few occasions to delay the start of their local 11:00 nightly newscasts.
In one case, however—that of the Anthony Quinn film Requiem for a Heavyweight —the network considered the entry too short. Requiem had a running time of 85 minutes, but this was judged untenable by CBS executives. Columbia Pictures, the film's theatrical distributor, was contacted and arrangements were made to "pad" the film with extra footage. According to the movie's producer, David Susskind, there were 40 minutes of outtakes from the film in the studio's vault that had to be located. It was from these that an extra 10 minutes was assembled and added to the CBS print. In fact, this is believed to be "the first time television has added footage to a movie."

First season (1965–66)

All lists of titles and show-dates in this article were culled from the archives of The New York Times, Corpus Christi Caller-Times, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel via microfilm.
  1. 1965-09-16: The Manchurian Candidate
  2. 1965-09-23: The Counterfeit Traitor
  3. 1965-09-30: The Notorious Landlady
  4. 1965-10-07: Parrish
  5. 1965-10-14: Houseboat
  6. 1965-10-21: Ocean's 11
  7. 1965-10-28: Mary, Mary
  8. 1965-11-04: Elmer Gantry
  9. 1965-11-11: The Wackiest Ship in the Army
  10. 1965-11-18: Experiment in Terror
  11. 1965-11-25: Mysterious Island
  12. 1965-12-02: The Bramble Bush
  13. 1965-12-09: Merrill's Marauders
  14. 1965-12-16: Two Rode Together
  15. 1965-12-23: Sunrise at Campobello
  16. 1965-12-30: Rome Adventure
  17. 1966-01-06: Requiem for a Heavyweight
  18. 1966-01-13: Cry for Happy
  19. 1966-01-20: The War Lover
  20. 1966-01-27: The Running Man
  21. 1966-02-03: Guns of Darkness
  22. 1966-02-10: A Fever in the Blood
  23. 1966-02-17: Susan Slade
  24. 1966-02-24: Harvey
  25. 1966-03-03: The Devil at 4 O'Clock
  26. 1966-03-10: The Interns
  27. 1966-03-17: The Notorious Landlady
  28. 1966-03-24: The Ladies Man
  29. 1966-03-31: Gidget Goes Hawaiian
  30. 1966-04-07: The Best of Enemies
  31. 1966-04-14: Elmer Gantry
  32. 1966-04-21: A Majority of One
  33. 1966-04-28: Houseboat
  34. 1966-05-05: John Paul Jones
From here through the summer, the remaining broadcasts consisted of reruns of many of the above films. The series' initial season thus comprised a total of 31 movies–12 from Warner Brothers, 13 from Columbia, 3 from Paramount, 2 from United Artists, plus one classic from Universal Studios in a transaction involving an aborted TV-movie deal. The next season, CBS would add a second anthology on Friday nights. The network's movie schedule for the 1966-67 season would begin in September with the Thursday Night Movie's television debut of the first half of The Music Man, starring Robert Preston and Shirley Jones. The concluding half of the film would be televised the following evening as the premiere offering of the new CBS Friday Night Movie.

The 1966–67 and '67–68 seasons: Thursdays and Fridays

Among the films CBS had acquired from Paramount Pictures in 1965, there included the Alfred Hitchcock shocker Psycho, which was scheduled for premiere the night of Friday, September 23, 1966. However, just days before the film was to air, U.S. Senator Charles H. Percy's college-aged daughter, Valerie, was reported slain by an unknown assailant, and details of the crime went viral in the national print and TV-radio media, including one news article that described the "blonde and pretty" Miss Percy as having been "beaten and stabbed to death in her bed." The inevitable analogy between Valerie Percy and a "blonde and pretty" Janet Leigh, plus the fact that both the senator's daughter and the Leigh character in the film were both murdered while in a vulnerable state became too much of a coincidence for some of the network's affiliates in the Midwest who announced they would not carry the film. Thus, shortly before Psycho's broadcast, CBS, without notice, yanked it in favor of a Frank Sinatra war film Kings Go Forth. Later that year, CBS decided not to air Psycho at any future date. The film was thus cancelled altogether despite the hefty $500,000 price that CBS had paid Paramount for exclusive rights to televise the movie.
The preemption of Psycho aside, however, the 1966-67 season saw an increase over the previous season in the number of Paramount films televised on CBS. These included Grace Kelly's Academy Award-winning performance in The Country Girl, Marlon Brando's only directorial effort, One-Eyed Jacks, and the Jerry Lewis comedy, The Delicate Delinquent. Columbia Pictures also made a strong showing during the Thursday Night Movie's second season with such entries as Sam Peckinpah's Civil War epic Major Dundee and the Jack Lemmon comedy, Good Neighbor Sam. But Warner Brothers output, so prominent throughout the anthology's first season, consisted of only five features—and one of those was the animated Gay Purr-ee, a film targeting the pre-teen audience and broadcast just two days before Christmas. Additionally, United Artists pictures during the season also totaled only five; however, the televising of one of those entries, Lilies of the Field, became of particular interest when it was reported that its director, Ralph Nelson, was "given the privilege of editing his own movie for television presentation." Further, Nelson was allowed to insert commercial breaks anywhere he wanted. He was even successful in negotiating a bit of risque dialogue delivered by Sidney Poitier, the film's star. Given that this occurred just a year after producer-director George Stevens had sued NBC over its telecast of his movie A Place in the Sun, arguing that "the network would damage the film by interrupting the narrative with a series of commercials", this move by CBS to collaborate with a filmmaker on the broadcast of his own work suggested that commerce could, on occasion, co-exist with art. Also of note, the religiously-themed film aired on Good Friday.
Thursdays :
  1. 1966-09-15: The Music Man, Part 1
  2. 1966-09-22: Good Neighbor Sam
  3. 1966-09-29: By Love Possessed
  4. 1966-10-06: Breakfast at Tiffany's
  5. 1966-10-13: The Victors
  6. 1966-10-20: The Rat Race
  7. 1966-10-27: All in a Night's Work
  8. 1966-11-03: Fail Safe
  9. 1966-11-10: Advise & Consent
  10. 1966-11-17: The Country Girl
  11. 1966-11-24: Jason and the Argonauts
  12. 1966-12-01: Love Has Many Faces
  13. 1966-12-08:
  14. 1966-12-15: Baby the Rain Must Fall
  15. 1966-12-22: A Raisin in the Sun
  16. 1966-12-29: Five Finger Exercise
  17. 1967-01-05: Summer and Smoke
  18. 1967-01-12: A Summer Place
  19. 1967-01-19: My Geisha
  20. 1967-01-26: Behold a Pale Horse
  21. 1967-02-02: The Pleasure of His Company
  22. 1967-02-09: The Caretakers
  23. 1967-02-16: One-Eyed Jacks
  24. 1967-02-23: Two for the Seesaw
  25. 1967-03-02: Bye Bye Birdie
  26. 1967-03-09: The Sins of Rachel Cade
  27. 1967-03-16: Major Dundee
  28. 1967-03-23: The Counterfeit Traitor
  29. 1967-03-30: Underworld USA
  30. 1967-04-06: Branded
  31. 1967-04-13: About Mrs. Leslie
  32. 1967-04-20: A Raisin in the Sun
  33. 1967-04-27: Toys in the Attic
Fridays :
  1. 1966-09-16: The Music Man, Part 2
  2. 1966-09-23: Kings Go Forth
  3. 1966-09-30: The Geisha Boy
  4. 1966-10-07: Branded
  5. 1966-10-14: Bye Bye Birdie
  6. 1966-10-21: One-Eyed Jacks
  7. 1966-10-28: Gidget Goes to Rome
  8. 1966-11-04: First Men in the Moon
  9. 1966-11-11: Major Dundee
  10. 1966-11-18: Because They're Young
  11. 1966-11-25: Barabbas
  12. 1966-12-02: The Man from the Diner's Club
  13. 1966-12-09: Genghis Khan
  14. 1966-12-16: Sail a Crooked Ship
  15. 1966-12-23: Gay Purr-ee
  16. 1966-12-30: Damn the Defiant!
  17. 1967-01-06: Five Branded Women
  18. 1967-01-13: PT 109
  19. 1967-01-20: The Delicate Delinquent
  20. 1967-01-27: Die! Die! My Darling!
  21. 1967-02-03: Island of Love
  22. 1967-02-10: Good Neighbor Sam
  23. 1967-02-17: Pepe
  24. 1967-02-24: Breakfast at Tiffany's
  25. 1967-03-03: The Pigeon That Took Rome
  26. 1967-03-10: The Geisha Boy
  27. 1967-03-17: Escape from Zahrain
  28. 1967-03-24: Lilies of the Field
  29. 1967-03-31: The Victors
  30. 1967-04-07: The Long Ships
  31. 1967-04-14: All in a Night's Work
  32. 1967-04-21: Gay Purr-ee
  33. 1967-04-28: Advise & Consent
The broadcast of Toys in the Attic in late April was the final CBS premiere of a theatrical film during the season. From May through August of that year, the series consisted of reruns. For the most part, features that had premiered on a Thursday night were rebroadcast months later on a Friday night, while Friday's premieres aired later in the season on a Thursday.
The following September, the CBS Thursday Night Movie began its third season with a film from a new package of Metro-Goldwyn Mayer movies—Jack Cardiff's Young Cassidy, a bio-pic on the life of Irish playwright Seán O'Casey. Then the next evening, the Friday Night Movie kicked off its sophomore year with an oddity: American-International Pictures' Beach Party, the first of a series of zany romantic comedies featuring Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello. Additionally, the network poured forth the remainder of United Artists titles acquired two years earlier—a balance of 20 motion pictures, including Stanley Kramer's tense racial drama The Defiant Ones, Jules Dassin's caper classic Topkapi, as well as the inspirational One Man's Way, based on the life of the influential pastor, Norman Vincent Peale. In fact, CBS aired this film the night of Martin Luther King's assassination; it seemed an especially apt gesture by the network, even if the film had been scheduled months earlier for just that very evening. Among the network's other offerings, Warner Brothers movies maintained their steady minority presence, among them actor Vic Morrow's eccentric interpretation of Prohibition-era bootlegger Dutch Schultz in Portrait of a Mobster —a film so violent that its repeat performance in June 1968 had to be postponed for a later broadcast, as it had been scheduled just two days after the slaying of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy. It was replaced by a rerun of the aforementioned One Man's Way.
As the CBS Thursday Night Movie entered the 1967-68 season, media critics took increased notice of the mature topics and risque themes explored in network movies—subject matter heretofore considered taboo in TV-land. For example, Jack Gould of the New York Times, singled out the network's September 1967 broadcast of Billy Wilder's The Apartment, with its frank yet satirical treatment of office politics and adultery. Gould noted "he paradox...that in shows expressly produced for TV there continues to be the traditional concern over the preservation of blandness to suit all age groups. Matters of sex, let alone hints of extramarital relationships, are skirted like the plague." But with the showing of The Apartment and other movies that tackled risky subjects, Gould concluded that "as the networks buy even more recent films, the trend will very likely increase." A week later, Gould observed that "there appears to be no denying that films of feature length...have established themselves as the most stable form of TV program"—stable, at least, in the sense that all three major networks had, by then, each committed two nights per week of their prime-time schedules to old but recent films. And Gould's colleague, George Gent, writing on the same page and same issue of the Times, confirmed this sentiment after "national Nielsen figures" revealed that CBS's two-part TV-premiere of the prisoner-of-war drama The Great Escape had been ranked #1 and #2 of that week's most-watched programs. "Audience taste," concluded Gent, "continues to run in the direction of feature-length movies."
Not all critics, however, were receptive to this new trend in viewership. Syndicated entertainment writer Cynthia Lowry, for example, noted that CBS, as well as its two competitors, were engaged in the programming practice of front-loading—in other words, "piling in early the best feature-films." She warned that later "they will have to put on some of the turkeys—and there are those in every package." Lowry further complained that as a result of the popularity of old movies, new TV programs were "suffering seriously this season from the competition" while attempting to establish a loyal fan base of their own during the crucial first weeks of their broadcast. Ms. Lowry's objections notwithstanding, however, as long as movie anthologies continued to deliver better-than-average product, superior viewer ratings would continue to endure—which they did. Below is listed the entire CBS roster for a season that began with bubbling confidence.
Thursdays :
  1. 1967-09-07: Young Cassidy
  2. 1967-09-14: The Great Escape, Part 1
  3. 1967-09-21: The Apartment
  4. 1967-09-28: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
  5. 1967-10-05: The Yellow Rolls-Royce
  6. 1967-10-12: Splendor in the Grass
  7. 1967-10-19: The Defiant Ones
  8. 1967-10-26: Critic's Choice
  9. 1967-11-02: Days of Wine and Roses
  10. 1967-11-09: The 7th Dawn
  11. 1967-11-16: Woman of Straw
  12. 1967-11-23: PT 109
  13. 1967-11-30: The Money Trap
  14. 1967-12-07: Under Capricorn
  15. 1967-12-14: Party Girl
  16. 1967-12-21: I Could Go On Singing
  17. 1967-12-28: Stolen Hours
  18. 1968-01-04: The Music Man, Part 1
  19. 1968-01-11: Topkapi
  20. 1968-01-18: Torpedo Run
  21. 1968-01-25: Where the Spies Are
  22. 1968-02-01: Young Dillinger
  23. 1968-02-08: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
  24. 1968-02-15: I Want to Live!
  25. 1968-02-22: The Great Escape, Part 1
  26. 1968-02-29: Spencer's Mountain
  27. 1968-03-07: The Best Man
  28. 1968-03-14: The Thin Red Line
  29. 1968-03-21: Goodbye Again
  30. 1968-03-28: A Night to Remember
  31. 1968-04-04: One Man's Way
  32. 1968-04-11: Kings of the Sun
  33. 1968-04-18: Escape from East Berlin
  34. 1968-04-25: Circle of Deception
Fridays :
  1. 1967-09-08: Beach Party
  2. 1967-09-15: The Great Escape, Part 2
  3. 1967-09-22: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
  4. 1967-09-29: North by Northwest
  5. 1967-10-06: Viva Las Vegas
  6. 1967-10-13: Spencer's Mountain
  7. 1967-10-20: Love Is a Ball
  8. 1967-10-27: Rampage
  9. 1967-11-03: McLintock!
  10. 1967-11-10: Palm Springs Weekend
  11. 1967-11-17: Call Me Bwana
  12. 1967-11-24: Around the World Under the Sea
  13. 1967-12-01: The Horizontal Lieutenant
  14. 1967-12-08: Tickle Me
  15. 1967-12-15: Wall of Noise
  16. 1967-12-22: Escape from East Berlin
  17. 1967-12-29: Portrait of a Mobster
  18. 1968-01-05: The Music Man, Part 2
  19. 1968-01-12: A Shot in the Dark
  20. 1968-01-19: 633 Squadron
  21. 1968-01-26: Island of Love
  22. 1968-02-02: The Apartment
  23. 1968-02-09: The Secret Invasion
  24. 1968-02-16: The World of Henry Orient
  25. 1968-02-23: The Great Escape, Part 2
  26. 1968-03-01: Flight from Ashiya
  27. 1968-03-08: The Sins of Rachel Cade
  28. 1968-03-15: McLintock!
  29. 1968-03-22:
  30. 1968-03-29: The Hellions
  31. 1968-04-05: Your Cheatin' Heart
  32. 1968-04-12: Joan of Arc
  33. 1968-04-19: Young Cassidy
  34. 1968-04-26: The Defiant Ones
From May through August 1968, many of the above films were re-issued as CBS prepared a new schedule for its two anthologies. In terms of quality and viewer attention, it was to mark the beginning of a dismal time for network movies.

The 1968–69 and '69–70 seasons: A decline in audience

Just as the previous season had begun with the biography of a playwright, CBS followed up in early September 1968 with another film based on a stage author's life. This time, it was Moss Hart, and the movie was Act One, based on Hart's best-selling autobiography of the same title. Act One had already aired on local stations in a few markets, but this was its first network showing. Thus, CBS declared the actual premiere date of the Thursday Night Movie's fourth season as September 26, when another biographical picture, the musical Gypsy, starring Natalie Wood as burlesque queen Gypsy Rose Lee, made its television bow. The next evening, a second Natalie Wood attraction, Sex and the Single Girl, initiated a third year's roster for the CBS Friday Night Movie. This entry garnered a lot of box-office in its heyday, but critics had labeled it a dud. In fact, similarly harsh judgments had been passed by critics on most of the other films CBS ran that season. With the exception of John Ford's Cheyenne Autumn —and even some of Ford's biographers refused to rank this among the director's best—the movies offered by the network's anthology in the fall of 1968 were by and large an inferior collection. Warner Brothers contributions, for example, ranged from soap-opera pathos to wooden heroics Additionally, such MGM fluff as Quick Before It Melts could hardly be called a game-saver. Top it off with the Thanksgiving night showing of the same studio's Marco the Magnificent, described by one critic as "long on spectacle and short on plot", and you have the ingredients to a disastrous season.
Meanwhile, the movies ABC and NBC offered their viewers appeared to be equally unattractive because when the Nielsen ratings for the November 1968 sweeps were released, not a single network movie telecast finished in the Top 20—an interesting predicament considering the lofty pronouncements made a year earlier by top media observers concerning the popularity of feature films on television. But as CBS vice-president Michael Dann noted, "There has been a decided shift since the opening of the season. I think you will see a decline in all movies for television." And as Rick Du Brow, UPI's television critic, confirmed:
Furthermore, Du Brow offered an explanation for this negative trend, one that went far beyond the inferiority of the films themselves. In short, he believed that audiences were "getting weary of the old-style approach" and that adherence to conventional modes of presentation by the networks had become constrictive, obsolete, and irrelevant for modern audiences. By means of contrast, the columnist held up newer, hip, innovative variety shows as a means of advancing toward that "new-style approach" that in the late 1960s attracted the most viewers. As for 3-year-old feature-films like some of those listed below, however, they were declared old-hat.
Thursdays :
  1. 1968-09-12: Act One
  2. 1968-09-19: Westward the Women
  3. 1968-09-26: Gypsy
  4. 1968-10-03: The Night of the Iguana
  5. 1968-10-10: The Glass Bottom Boat
  6. 1968-10-17: Youngblood Hawke
  7. 1968-10-24: Harum Scarum
  8. 1968-10-31: The Nanny
  9. 1968-11-07: The World, the Flesh, and the Devil
  10. 1968-11-14: God's Little Acre
  11. 1968-11-21: Cheyenne Autumn
  12. 1968-11-28: Marco the Magnificent
  13. 1968-12-05: In the Cool of the Day
  14. 1968-12-12: Lisa
  15. 1968-12-19: Guns at Batasi
  16. 1968-12-26: East of Sudan
  17. 1969-01-02: Splendor in the Grass
  18. 1969-01-09: Kisses for My President
  19. 1969-01-16: Man in the Middle
  20. 1969-01-23: Never Too Late
  21. 1969-01-30: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
  22. 1969-02-06: Please Don't Eat the Daisies
  23. 1969-02-13: Dead Ringer
  24. 1969-02-20: The Americanization of Emily
  25. 1969-02-27: Sex and the Single Girl
  26. 1969-03-06: Goodbye Charlie
  27. 1969-03-13: The Stripper
  28. 1969-03-20: Paris When It Sizzles
  29. 1969-03-27: The Night of the Iguana
  30. 1969-04-03: Seven Days in May
  31. 1969-04-10: The Chapman Report
  32. 1969-04-17:
  33. 1969-04-24: Act One
  34. 1969-05-01: Madison Avenue
  35. 1969-05-08: The Blue Angel
  36. 1969-05-15: A Distant Trumpet
Fridays :
  1. 1968-09-13: Viva Las Vegas
  2. 1968-09-20:
  3. 1968-09-27: Sex and the Single Girl
  4. 1968-10-04: The Singing Nun
  5. 1968-10-11: A Distant Trumpet
  6. 1968-10-18: Goodbye Charlie
  7. 1968-10-25: Shock Treatment
  8. 1968-11-01: Quick Before It Melts
  9. 1968-11-08: When the Boys Meet the Girls
  10. 1968-11-15: Diamond Head
  11. 1968-11-22: Ensign Pulver
  12. 1968-11-29: North by Northwest
  13. 1968-12-06: The Defector
  14. 1968-12-13: Advance to the Rear
  15. 1968-12-20: A Global Affair
  16. 1968-12-27: The House of the Seven Hawks
  17. 1969-01-03: The Incredible Mr. Limpet
  18. 1969-01-10: Where the Boys Are
  19. 1969-01-17: 4 For Texas
  20. 1969-01-24: Girl Happy
  21. 1969-01-31: Made in Paris
  22. 1969-02-07: Penelope
  23. 1969-02-14: Boys' Night Out
  24. 1969-02-21: Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
  25. 1969-02-28: The Glass Bottom Boat
  26. 1969-03-07: All Hands on Deck
  27. 1969-03-14: Harum Scarum
  28. 1969-03-21: Stalag 17
  29. 1969-03-28: Pre-empted for a CBS News Special Report
  30. 1969-04-04: The Singing Nun
  31. 1969-04-11: Gypsy
  32. 1969-04-18: Escape from Fort Bravo
  33. 1969-04-25: Siege of the Saxons
  34. 1969-05-02: Gigot
  35. 1969-05-09: The Alphabet Murders
  36. 1969-05-16: Tarzan Goes to India
The 1968-69 TV season finally witnessed a network prime-time movie for each night of the week. As author Robert Beverley Ray neatly summed up, "television had an NBC Monday Night Movie, an NBC Tuesday Night Movie, an ABC Wednesday Night Movie, a CBS Thursday Night Movie, a CBS Friday Night Movie, an NBC Saturday Night Movie, and to complete the week, an ABC Sunday Night Movie." Critic Jack Gould wondered whether a "battle of film-against-film may not be as remote as some in TV had originally thought." And upon the arrival of 1969, another media critic made a hopeful New Year's prediction that "ome network will bravely drop one of those nightly two-hour movie reruns" and replace it with "two half-hour situation-comedies plus a one-hour variety show a very young singer with a Southern accent and a guitar". That forecast proved only half-correct—the singer with the Southern accent and guitar turned out to be Glen Campbell, whose weekly variety show premiered on CBS two weeks into January 1969. Campbell's broadcast, however, replaced neither of the network's movie anthologies.
The beginning of the 1969-70 season saw a brief surge in audience numbers with CBS's two-part world TV premiere of The Guns of Navarone, based on the Alistair MacLean best-seller. Then 14 days later, the comedy Doctor, You've Got to Be Kidding qualified as the sixth most-watched program of the Nielsen's rating period, while the Glenn Ford thriller Fate is the Hunter scored at #16 during the same week. And in the season's fifth week, the Gothic thriller Two on a Guillotine and another Glenn Ford picture, The Last Challenge, both wound up in the Top 20. But another trend became evident in CBS's film-anthologies as viewers began to notice a sharp increase of repeat broadcasts. As a result, there was a corresponding decrease in new films available for showing, and there was a good reason for this. Production of new theatrical films had slackened to a near-standstill in Hollywood and as a result, some studios, among them 20th Century Fox and Paramount, were "waiting to unload their expensive backlog of films" to the networks. Indeed, CBS had completed a deal with Fox a year earlier for exclusive rights to televise some of its most recent films, but the network had been allowing those to merely trickle through to viewers at a rate of 5 or 6 per season. This was becoming CBS's programming strategy with product leased from other studios as well. Consequently, the films listed below for the new season, 1969–70, included a greater number of reruns than in previous years.
Thursdays :
  1. 1969-09-25: The Guns of Navarone, Part 1
  2. 1969-10-02: The Sandpiper
  3. 1969-10-09: Fate is the Hunter
  4. 1969-10-16: Inside Daisy Clover
  5. 1969-10-23: Two on a Guillotine
  6. 1969-10-30: Dear Heart
  7. 1969-11-06: 4 for Texas
  8. 1969-11-13: Mister Buddwing
  9. 1969-11-20: The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
  10. 1969-11-27: Rio Conchos
  11. 1969-12-04: Ten Little Indians
  12. 1969-12-11: Libel
  13. 1969-12-18: The Americanization of Emily
  14. 1969-12-25: Me and the Colonel
  15. 1970-01-70: All in a Night's Work
  16. 1970-01-08: My Blood Runs Cold
  17. 1970-01-15: Escape from Fort Bravo
  18. 1970-01-22: Never Too Late
  19. 1970-01-29: The Law and Jake Wade
  20. 1970-02-05: The Chapman Report
  21. 1970-02-12: Hatari!, Part 1
  22. 1970-02-19: Hud
  23. 1970-02-26: Peyton Place, Part 1
  24. 1970-03-05: The African Queen
  25. 1970-03-12:
  26. 1970-03-19: A New Kind of Love
  27. 1970-03-26: The Power
  28. 1970-04-02: Fate is the Hunter
  29. 1970-04-09: Doctor, You've Got to Be Kidding
  30. 1970-04-16: Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows
  31. 1970-04-23: The Millionairess
  32. 1970-04-30: Operation Amsterdam
  33. 1970-05-07: Three Bites of the Apple
  34. 1970-05-14: Hotel Paradiso
  35. 1970-05-21: Pirates of Tortuga
  36. 1970-05-28: The Innocents
Fridays :
  1. 1969-09-26: The Guns of Navarone, Part 2
  2. 1969-10-03: Double Trouble
  3. 1969-10-10: Doctor, You've Got to Be Kidding
  4. 1969-10-17: Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows
  5. 1969-10-24: The Last Challenge
  6. 1969-10-31: Come Fly with Me
  7. 1969-11-07: How to Stuff a Wild Bikini
  8. 1969-11-14: Penelope
  9. 1969-11-21: Fanny
  10. 1969-11-28: Please Don't Eat the Daisies
  11. 1969-12-05: Having a Wild Weekend
  12. 1969-12-12: Paris When It Sizzles
  13. 1969-12-19: Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
  14. 1969-12-26: Anna and the King of Siam
  15. 1970-01-02: Girl Happy
  16. 1970-01-09: Sole Survivor
  17. 1970-01-16: Robin and the 7 Hoods
  18. 1970-01-23: Wake Me When It's Over
  19. 1970-01-30: The Venetian Affair
  20. 1970-02-06: Cutter's Trail
  21. 1970-02-13: Hatari!, Part 2
  22. 1970-02-20:
  23. 1970-02-27: Peyton Place, Part 2
  24. 1970-03-06: The Sandpiper
  25. 1970-03-13: Two on a Guillotine
  26. 1970-03-20: Rio Conchos
  27. 1970-03-27: Where the Boys Are
  28. 1970-04-03:
  29. 1970-04-10: Advance to the Rear
  30. 1970-04-17: The Third Day
  31. 1970-04-24: The Angel Wore Red
  32. 1970-05-01: Tarzan and the Valley of Gold
  33. 1970-05-08: The Crooked Road
  34. 1970-05-15: Come Fly with Me
  35. 1970-05-22: Hold On!
  36. 1970-05-29: The Visit
Upon the arrival of the summer months, many of the above titles were re-broadcast. However, there was also a smattering of premieres on CBS throughout this period. Island in the Sun, based on Alec Waugh's best-selling post-WWII novel about interracial tensions on a Caribbean island, was shown for the first time the evening of June 11, 1970. And on August 14, there was the TV debut of Nine Hours to Rama, starring Horst Buchholz as the Hindu extremist who assassinated Gandhi. Moreover, to fill out its summer movie fare, the network followed through on a surprise April announcement that it would add yet a third movie anthology on Tuesday nights. It featured a combination of reruns plus some novel offerings, like the 1962 fantasy Five Weeks in a Balloon, with Barbara Eden ; a 1968 doomsday thriller Panic in the City, featuring Howard Duff ; and the 1965 remake of the classic She, starring Ursula Andress. For film fans, however, this third movie-night proved to be only a summer fling, for at the beginning of the 1970-71 season, CBS cancelled its Tuesday anthology to make room for its customary sitcom fodder with new episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres

The 1970–71 season: The rise of the made-for-TV movie

With the scheduling of more recent films from Hollywood, the three major networks were faced with the question of how best to present increasingly risque material without offending the mainstream tastes of their audiences. Up until 1970, censors would simply bleep salty dialogue or edit shots, trusting that such excisions would not detract from a film's storyline. In some cases, however, it became necessary to remove so much of a film that additional scenes had to be written and produced by a network and then inserted into the movie so that its telecast not only filled a 2-hour time slot but also made sense to viewers. NBC, for example, had contracted with Universal to run the R-rated Three into Two Won't Go during the fall of 1970. Questionable scenes from this British-made thriller were either severely chopped or completely eliminated and replaced with 17 minutes of new footage produced in a Hollywood studio and featuring actors who had not appeared in the original conception. As a result of such practices, the networks were "beginning to smart under the criticisms of their cutting and re-shaping" of additional films such as Secret Ceremony and The Night of the Following Day. This was a consequence of the displacement impact of broadcast television. Motion picture studios, having withstood the long decline of theater-attendance by families, had increasingly re-crafted their product during the 1960s to appeal to a smaller, more mature audience in both theme and presentation. Consequently, some films became essentially impossible to re-cut or revise into family broadcast-ready entertainment. Recognizing this, NBC soon abandoned these attempts at the bowdlerization and/or alteration of a theatrical film's content. But at the same time, it became apparent to all three networks that if some movies could not be successfully repackaged for family viewing, then perhaps a stronger emphasis should be focused on producing more films specifically for television. As a result, this hybrid genre began to exert a larger presence on American home screens.
The origin of the American network TV-movie had actually occurred years earlier, when NBC had entered into an agreement with Universal wherein the studio produce films approximately 98 minutes long to be broadcast initially on the network. Universal, however, retained the distribution rights to re-release these productions in overseas theatre and television markets. Moreover, NBC agreed to pay "from 30 to 65 percent of the production costs" in return for U.S. theatrical and syndication rights as well as "the right to show the films first." This pact resulted in such successful TV-films as the disaster movie The Doomsday Flight starring Jack Lord; The Borgia Stick, an industrial spy drama with Don Murray and Inger Stevens; and ', the original manifestation of Peter Falk's police detective/character, Lt. Columbo. NBC thus remained the acknowledged pioneer in TV-movies until 1969, when the ABC network produced and premiered its new weekly series of made-for-TV films, The ABC Movie of the Week. Some of these features were so popular that they were later released to theaters in America and Europe for further exhibition, among them Joseph Sargent's Tribes, Buzz Kulik's Brian's Song and Steven Spielberg's Duel. As a result, ABC planned a second anthology of new offerings under the title, Movie of the Weekend.
By contrast with its competitors, CBS had contributed a scant number of made-for-TV feature-length films; and what little they had scheduled were mostly produced in association with independent companies like QM Productions or the network's own theatrical film-producing arm, Cinema Center 100. However, four years earlier, CBS had entered into an agreement with Universal to contribute $340,000 to the studio's million-dollar budgeted remake of the classic western The Plainsman. In return, CBS was granted the right to exclusively premiere the film as a Thursday Night Movie telecast. However, once production was completed and The Plainsman was screened for Universal's top brass, they concluded they had a hit movie on their hands. Thus, the studio re-negotiated with CBS to drop its commitment to run the film first so that Universal could instead open The Plainsman in theaters. The network agreed, but only on condition Universal promise in return "to give an existing feature film from their backlog." Nevertheless, CBS vice-president Michael Dann, a fan of the TV-movie innovation, predicted two months afterward that in the near-future "the studios will be making 50 to 75 such pictures a year." The 1970-71 season would prove him correct. And when the Thursday Night Movie opened its fall schedule with the premiere of a low-budget, made-for-TV movie, rather than a proven Hollywood blockbuster guaranteed to lure mass viewership, it became CBS's way of declaring its commitment to product that, although cheaply manufactured, was nevertheless new and topical. In this case, the movie was The Brotherhood of the Bell, and the film's star was Glenn Ford, a movie actor who had never appeared in a television-film. In fact, before shooting on the project even began, Ford had been warned by friends in the industry that he would hate the experience. Instead, the actor reported that "it was five of the most enjoyable weeks I've ever spent working...it was a good solid script with people like Maurice Evans and Dean Jagger working with me." The film received respectable notices from the critics, and its reputation has grown ever since. In 1986, for example, critic David Deal would label Brotherhood "one of the very best television movies of the era...a first-rate production." And in recent years, it has acquired the reputation of a conspiracy-theory cult classic. As a result of the film's success, the new season would witness CBS's determination to increase its output of works produced directly for television—especially during late February to early April 1971, when 5 out of 11 features shown were made-for-TV world premieres.
Thursdays :
  1. 1970-09-17: The Brotherhood of the Bell
  2. 1970-09-24: The Dirty Dozen
  3. 1970-10-01: BUtterfield 8
  4. 1970-10-08: The Great Race, Part 1
  5. 1970-10-15: Robin and the 7 Hoods
  6. 1970-10-22: The Biggest Bundle of Them All
  7. 1970-10-29: Heaven with a Gun
  8. 1970-11-05: The Shuttered Room
  9. 1970-11-12: This Property Is Condemned
  10. 1970-11-19: A Place in the Sun
  11. 1970-11-26: Oklahoma!
  12. 1970-12-03: Peyton Place, Part 1.
  13. 1970-12-10: Chuka
  14. 1970-12-17: Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows
  15. 1970-12-24: The Password Is Courage
  16. 1970-12-31: Chamber of Horrors
  17. 1971-01-07: The Bridge on the River Kwai, Part 1
  18. 1971-01-14: Five Branded Women
  19. 1971-01-21: The African Queen
  20. 1971-01-28: Return to Peyton Place
  21. 1971-02-04: The Power
  22. 1971-02-11: The Cincinnati Kid
  23. 1971-02-18: Battle of the Bulge, Part 1
  24. 1971-02-25: Not with My Wife, You Don't!
  25. 1971-03-04: None but the Brave
  26. 1971-03-11:
  27. 1971-03-18: The Shuttered Room
  28. 1971-03-25: Casino Royale
  29. 1971-04-01: Brainstorm
  30. 1971-04-08: Who's Minding the Store?
  31. 1971-04-15: Kid Rodelo
  32. 1971-04-22: Term of Trial
  33. 1971-04-29: Judith
  34. 1971-05-06: The Battle of the Villa Fiorita
  35. 1971-05-13: A Covenant with Death
  36. 1971-05-20: Chamber of Horrors
Fridays :'
  1. 1970-09-18: Casino Royale
  2. 1970-09-25: The Cincinnati Kid
  3. 1970-10-02: None but the Brave
  4. 1970-10-09: The Great Race, Part 2
  5. 1970-10-16: Stay Away, Joe
  6. 1970-10-23: Not with My Wife, You Don't!
  7. 1970-10-30: Warning Shot
  8. 1970-11-06: One-Eyed Jacks
  9. 1970-11-13: The Guns of Navarone
  10. 1970-11-20:
  11. 1970-11-27: The Last Challenge
  12. 1970-12-04: Peyton Place, Part 2.
  13. 1970-12-11: Easy Come, Easy Go
  14. 1970-12-18: Once a Thief
  15. 1970-12-25: Life With Father
  16. 1971-01-01: Tarzan's Three Challenges
  17. 1971-01-08: The Bridge on the River Kwai, Part 2
  18. 1971-01-15: Marriage on the Rocks
  19. 1971-01-22: She
  20. 1971-01-29: The Rounders
  21. 1971-02-05: First to Fight
  22. 1971-02-12: The Rat Race
  23. 1971-02-19: Battle of the Bulge, Part 2
  24. 1971-02-26:
  25. 1971-03-05: The Biggest Bundle of Them All
  26. 1971-03-12:
  27. 1971-03-19: This Property Is Condemned
  28. 1971-03-26:
  29. 1971-04-02: .
  30. 1971-04-09: Tarzan and the Great River
  31. 1971-04-16:
  32. 1971-04-23: Sons and Lovers
  33. 1971-04-30: Jack of Diamonds
  34. 1971-05-07: The Disorderly Orderly
  35. 1971-05-14: Tarzan's Three Challenges
  36. 1971-05-21: The Cool Ones
The above schedule was augmented by the Wednesday, November 25, 1970 TV premiere of The Unsinkable Molly Brown, starring Debbie Reynolds. And on February 14, 1971, there was a special Sunday-night world TV premiere of the film Ben-Hur, featuring Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd. This Academy-Award winner for Best Picture was five hours long when aired with commercial interruptions, running from 7 pm to midnight. In addition, just as the network had done during the previous year, CBS premiered a handful of movies throughout its summer schedule. Among those were included: The Violent Ones, Night Must Fall, The Wrong Box, The Frozen Dead, Doctor Faustus, The Money Jungle, and An American Dream''.

The 1971–72 season: Thursdays and Sundays

Throughout the summer of 1971, CBS prepared its own weekly series of TV-movies for the new fall season. It was dubbed The New CBS Friday Night Movies. but one network representative advertised it as "nothing more than an old-fashioned suspense anthology series," much like the old U.S. Steel Hour or Playhouse 90—only "tricked out with film," as opposed to live studio broadcasts, the norm for presentation during the early 1950s. This new project was originally envisioned by producer Philip Barry, Jr. to exclusively consist of "all-suspense of various sorts." Barry further promised viewers that the new anthology would avoid "doing any law enforcement shows, no doctors, no lawyers, none of the usual things." Director Alf Kjellin, who had learned his craft under fellow Swede Ingmar Bergman, was hired to helm one of the show's premiere entries, . Though Kjellin responded positively to the 90-minute television format for filmmaking, he was bothered by certain impractical restrictions, telling one interviewer, "Ten days is not a long time to make a picture." Nonetheless, the New CBS Friday Night Movie began its run in September 1971, occupying the 9:30–11:00 time slot. It was not to be a successful outing, chiefly because it was scheduled opposite NBC's own World Premiere series, which began one hour earlier.
In order to accommodate its new suspense anthology, CBS shuffled its Sunday night line-up to make room for its alternative presentation-format for old movies. Thus what had been known for the past 5 years as the CBS Friday Night Movie became the CBS Sunday Night Movie, airing from 7:30 to 9:30 pm. This was a highly publicized programming change because it necessitated the cancellation of CBS's signature variety series, the long-running Ed Sullivan Show. After 23 successful years, this icon of the airwaves was ordered to vacate the premises and beginning in September, the CBS Sunday Night Movie launched its 1971-72 season with the TV premiere of the Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn 1967 comedy-drama, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. But this would be remembered as the year the holiday classic , a TV film starring Patricia Neal, was first aired. Critics lavished unqualified praise, including one writer who labeled it "a lovely pre-holiday program—sweet but never cloying and sparked with humor." Not only was this production repeated each year at Yuletide throughout the decade, but it also served as the genesis for the long-running family-drama series The Waltons.
Thursdays :
  1. 1971-09-16: Harper
  2. 1971-09-23: The Ambushers
  3. 1971-09-30: How to Save a Marriage and Ruin Your Life
  4. 1971-10-07: BUtterfield 8
  5. 1971-10-14: The Dirty Dozen
  6. 1971-10-21: Pre-empted by CBS Reports
  7. 1971-10-28: The Comedians
  8. 1971-11-04: Berserk!
  9. 1971-11-11: Don't Make Waves
  10. 1971-11-18: Pendulum
  11. 1971-11-25: Pre-empted by CBS Reports
  12. 1971-12-02: The Impossible Years
  13. 1971-12-09: The Comic
  14. 1971-12-16: Arrivederci, Baby!
  15. 1971-12-23: Pre-empted by CBS Reports
  16. 1971-12-30: Pre-empted by CBS Reports
  17. 1972-01-06: Heaven with a Gun
  18. 1972-01-13: The Liquidator
  19. 1972-01-20: Chuka
  20. 1972-01-27: Pre-empted by CBS Reports
  21. 1972-02-03:
  22. 1972-02-10: A Streetcar Named Desire
  23. 1972-02-17: My Blood Runs Cold
  24. 1972-02-24: Bandolero!
  25. 1972-03-02: Harper
  26. 1972-03-09: Pre-empted by CBS Reports
  27. 1972-03-16: Return to Peyton Place
  28. 1972-03-23: Promise Her Anything
  29. 1972-03-30: Berserk!
  30. 1972-04-06: The Impossible Years
  31. 1972-04-13: Pendulum
  32. 1972-04-20: Interlude
  33. 1972-04-27: Kona Coast
  34. 1972-05-04: Apache Uprising
  35. 1972-05-11: Pre-empted for a CBS sports special
  36. 1972-05-18: Duffy
  37. 1972-05-25: The Bobo
Sundays :
  1. 1971-09-19: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
  2. 1971-09-26: Bandolero!
  3. 1971-10-03: To Sir, with Love
  4. 1971-10-10: The Sand Pebbles Part 1
  5. 1971-10-17: The Sand Pebbles Part 2
  6. 1971-10-24: Battle of the Bulge Part 1
  7. 1971-10-31: Battle of the Bulge Part 2
  8. 1971-11-07: Marriage on the Rocks
  9. 1971-11-14: Anzio
  10. 1971-11-21: Born Free
  11. 1971-11-28: The Great Race Part 1
  12. 1971-12-05: The Great Race Part 2
  13. 1971-12-12: Will Penny
  14. 1971-12-19: The Homecoming: A Christmas Story
  15. 1971-12-26: D-Day the Sixth of June
  16. 1972-01-02: Up the Down Staircase
  17. 1972-01-09: Stay Away, Joe
  18. 1972-01-16: The Bridge on the River Kwai Part 1
  19. 1972-01-23: The Bridge on the River Kwai Part 2
  20. 1972-01-30: Welcome Home, Johnny Bristol
  21. 1972-02-06: The Brotherhood of the Bell
  22. 1972-02-13: Ben-Hur Part One
  23. 1972-02-20: Ben-Hur Part Two
  24. 1972-02-27: Anzio
  25. 1972-03-05: A Fine Madness
  26. 1972-03-12: Five Million Years to Earth
  27. 1972-03-19: Easy Come, Easy Go
  28. 1972-03-26: Pre-empted by a CBS entertainment special
  29. 1972-04-02: The Shoes of the Fisherman
  30. 1972-04-09: Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River
  31. 1972-04-16: Tarzan and the Jungle Boy
  32. 1972-04-23: Funeral in Berlin
  33. 1972-04-30: Up the Down Staircase
  34. 1972-05-07: Enter Laughing
  35. 1972-05-14: The Firechasers
  36. 1972-05-21: Gentle Giant
  37. 1972-05-28: A Dandy in Aspic
Summer premieres included the Vince Edwards crime drama Hammerhead, the spy melodrama Assignment K, with Stephen Boyd and Camilla Sparv, and the surreal comedy The Tiger Makes Out, featuring the husband-and-wife team, Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson. There was also the TV debut of the Danny Kaye military comedy On the Double, which included a bawdy sequence in a wartime Berlin cabaret where the comedian/hero, in drag, impersonates Marlene Dietrich and is later "seduced" in a dressing room by a drunken Luftwaffe officer. In earlier years, these scenes would have been considered too racy for prime-time audiences, what with their satire of transvestism and gay sex. As it happened, however, CBS had broadcast another film with similar scenes, albeit in a more serious framework, less than four months prior—Luchino Visconti's The Damned, originally rated X when it first opened in theaters. Obviously, the film had to "undergo some severe editing to conform" with a TV audience's acceptance and the resulting presentation, which was pre-screened for affiliates via closed-circuit, was so incoherent that many stations refused to run it.
The Damned was never intended for prime-time airing. Instead, it was among the initial presentations by CBS for television's first late-night network film anthology, for on the evening of Valentine's Day 1972, the network mailed a love-letter to America's film fans when it broke with network late-night tradition by cancelling its Merv Griffin talk-show to make way for The CBS Late Movie. In so doing, the organization that years earlier had spurned the scheduling of old movies as "uncreative" was suddenly running a total of 7 feature-films each week. The axing of the Griffin show was of little consequence when one considers that his program was being broadcast on only 129 affiliates, whereas the CBS Late Movie debuted on 179. It was also a wise business decision when taking into account that the network was paying, on average, only $30,000-40,000 for each of the 220 movies leased from Warner Brothers and MGM. At such cheap rates, CBS was clearing $100,000 per late-night broadcast.
Meanwhile, in prime time, the CBS Sunday Night Movie appeared to be holding its own in terms of audience shares, especially during the first half of October when it was rated the third most-watched network telecast. Unfortunately, those numbers did not hold up; and with ratings for the New CBS Friday Night Movie also sagging, it was decided the upcoming season to return the Sunday Night Movie to its original Friday night time slot and to transfer the Friday made-for-TV movie anthology to Tuesdays. However, one trend introduced late in 1971—the sporadic pre-emption of CBS's Thursday films for news specials—would continue into the next season. This was largely due to the fact that 1972 was not only an election year, but it was also a time when an American president made important overseas state visits to both China and the Soviet Union. It is during such events that information programming enjoys its most receptive audience. And in the next season, with the Watergate scandal gathering steam despite President Nixon's landslide re-election, television documentaries and network panel discussions would draw better-than-usual ratings. Thus, news specials would continue to pinch-hit for the Thursday Night Movie on select occasions.

The 1972–73 season: Return to Thursdays and Fridays

In the fall of 1972, the issue dominating most discussions on matters related to TV and radio involved on-air obscenities. It even preoccupied lawmakers in Congress, where Sen. John Pastore, chairman of the Commerce Committee, led an investigation into alleged broadcast profanity. He later told one reporter, "Frankly, there have been some things that have shocked me. There have been four-letter words used on radio. Of course, they haven't gone that far on television...the networks have bleeped them out." Apparently the senator overlooked network film-telecasts, for it was the potty-mouth controversy that cost the CBS Thursday Night Movie half its audience. It occurred on an evening in mid-November when roughly 100 affiliates refused to air the true-crime film In Cold Blood "on the grounds of explicit content"—specifically, the uncensored use of the word "frigging" by one of its two lead characters. ABC, however, experienced viewer wrath of a different kind when John Wayne's was altered by network censors. This is how Chicago news columnist Mike Royko illustrated the situation:
What perplexed viewers about ABC's censorship was that a week later, the same network would show the movie Patton, leaving George C. Scott's swear words intact—a move that may have emboldened CBS to retain the double entendres and much of the blue language in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. New York Times critic Howard Thompson praised the telecast, especially the manner in which the network's commercial breaks were carefully placed so as not to detract from the power of Edward Albee's drama. As for the questionable dialogue, Thompson noted that every 'hell' and 'damn' prevailed. He added, "Sharp ears may have caught an early 'goddamn' from Miss Taylor she bellowed the same word later...an agonized shriek underscoring the despair of a drama that by then had many viewers riveted to their chairs." In fact, CBS slated the film for broadcast during the all-important sweeps month of February 1973. However, the strategy backfired; the film finished at #38 for the week it was shown. This prompted columnist Rick DuBrow to call out TV executives who persisted in programming a "comfortably predictable list of motion pictures and determine by title and category how they will do in the ratings game." In other words, an Oscar-winning movie that features a hot tabloid item like Liz and Dick exchanging curse-laden insults will not always guarantee a huge TV audience—and unfortunately for the network, it didn't.
But if CBS's roster of theatrical features failed to match programming expectations, its Tuesday night made-for-TV product was a disaster. As writer Norman Mark noted, "CBS has flopped with almost all of its films this season, an unequaled record." One exception, however, was the much-touted , starring Jenny Agutter as an Irish-Catholic girl in war-torn Belfast who falls in love with a British/Protestant soldier. According to New York Times critic John J. O'Connor, the film "got off to a fine start and came to a convincingly moving end. It was somewhere around the middle that the drama failed almost fatally vague." But CBS's Thursday-night world premiere of Gay Talese's Honor Thy Father in March 1973 received rave notices, including one that bestowed high praise on the film's star Joseph Bologna for "a highly fascinating portrayal" of Salvatore Bonanno, heir to legendary crime boss Joe Bonanno. These works, however, were the only two high points of a disappointing season.
Thursdays :
  1. 1972-09-14: Around the World in 80 Days, Part 1
  2. 1972-09-21: The Professionals
  3. 1972-09-28: Mackenna's Gold
  4. 1972-10-05: The Undefeated
  5. 1972-10-12: Marlowe
  6. 1972-10-19: The Legend of Lylah Clare
  7. 1972-10-26: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
  8. 1972-11-02: The Dirty Dozen, Part 1
  9. 1972-11-09: Wait Until Dark
  10. 1972-11-16: In Cold Blood
  11. 1972-11-23: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
  12. 1972-11-30: Bandolero!
  13. 1972-12-07: The African Queen
  14. 1972-12-14: How to Murder Your Wife
  15. 1972-12-21: Will Penny
  16. 1972-12-28: Pre-empted for CBS special presentations
  17. 1973-01-04: The Sand Pebbles, Part 1
  18. 1973-01-11: The Gypsy Moths
  19. 1973-01-18: Vertigo
  20. 1973-01-25: The Hallelujah Trail
  21. 1973-02-01: Pre-empted for CBS Specials
  22. 1973-02-08: The Professionals
  23. 1973-02-15: Valley of the Dolls
  24. 1973-02-22: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
  25. 1973-03-01: '
  26. 1973-03-08: The Marcus-Nelson Murders
  27. 1973-03-15: Pre-empted by a CBS Special Presentation
  28. 1973-03-22: Hornets' Nest
  29. 1973-03-29: ...tick...tick...tick...
  30. 1973-04-05: Don't Make Waves
  31. 1973-04-12: How to Save a Marriage and Ruin Your Life
  32. 1973-04-19: Pre-empted by CBS Special Presentations
  33. 1973-04-26: Pre-empted by CBS news specials
  34. 1973-05-03: Hot Millions
  35. 1973-05-10: The Moon Is Blue
  36. 1973-05-17: Countdown
  37. 1973-05-24: Blow Up
  38. 1973-05-31: Pre-empted for CBS news specials
Fridays :'
  1. 1972-09-15: Around the World in 80 Days, Part 2
  2. 1972-09-22: Valley of the Dolls
  3. 1972-09-29: ...tick...tick...tick...
  4. 1972-10-06: To Sir, with Love
  5. 1972-10-13: They Call Me Mister Tibbs!
  6. 1972-10-20: Pre-empted by CBS news specials
  7. 1972-10-27: The McKenzie Break
  8. 1972-11-03: The Dirty Dozen, Part 2
  9. 1972-11-10: Hornets' Nest
  10. 1972-11-17: McLintock!
  11. 1972-11-24: Live a Little, Love a Little
  12. 1972-12-01: The Chairman
  13. 1972-12-08: The Homecoming: A Christmas Story
  14. 1972-12-15: The Ambushers
  15. 1972-12-22: Goodbye, Mr. Chips
  16. 1972-12-29: Hook, Line & Sinker
  17. 1973-01-05: The Sand Pebbles, Part 2
  18. 1973-01-12: Petulia
  19. 1973-01-19: The Man Who Knew Too Much
  20. 1973-01-26: The Unsinkable Molly Brown
  21. 1973-02-02: Pre-empted for a CBS Special Presentation
  22. 1973-02-09: The Undefeated
  23. 1973-02-16: They Call Me Mister Tibbs!
  24. 1973-02-23: Wait Until Dark
  25. 1973-03-02: Mckenna's Gold
  26. 1973-03-09: The Cincinnati Kid
  27. 1973-03-16: Pre-empted by CBS Special Presentation
  28. 1973-03-23:
  29. 1973-03-30: Marlowe
  30. 1973-04-06: Southern Star
  31. 1973-04-13:
  32. 1973-04-20: Oklahoma!
  33. 1973-04-27: Hook, Line & Sinker
  34. 1973-05-04: Chubasco
  35. 1973-05-11: The Trouble with Girls
  36. 1973-05-18: The Sergeant
  37. 1973-05-25:
  38. 1973-06-01: The Maltese Bippy /A Walk with Love and Death
There was also the animated Beatles film, Yellow Submarine, which debuted as a special Sunday-evening presentation on October 29, 1972. Additionally, CBS had scheduled the rock-festival documentary Woodstock for late April 1973, but then reversed course due to nervousness over "what it regard as raciness in the film." As a result, it would not be televised until several years later by another network, NBC. But the Thursday Night Movie did manage intermittent summer premieres, including The Last of the Secret Agents?, featuring the comedy team of Allen and Rossi, on June 7, plus the coming-of-age teen comedy , aka The First Time, starring Jacqueline Bisset, a week later. Also, there was the debut of the Merchant-Ivory production The Guru, with Rita Tushingham and Michael York, on June 22, as well as the July 19th TV premiere of the Michael Caine film, Deadfall. CBS wrapped up its summer season of first-time showings on September 7 with the telecast of The Vatican Affair'', starring Walter Pidgeon and Klaus Kinski.

The 1973–74 and '74–75 seasons: Violence, movies, and censorship

In an October 1973 address to the Better Business Bureau in Nashville, CBS president discussed "the changing tastes and standards of society and the growing maturity" of television audiences that influenced his network's decision to air such controversial films as In Cold Blood and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Wood confirmed that he had deliberately taken "certain calculated risks." However, he felt those gambles were justified. Later, as if to echo Wood's sentiment, NBC president stated that "television will never lead any parade of permissiveness. But it should be chained to the past by a few hundred letters of complaint." Yet to critic John J. O'Connor, the entire issue was irrelevant. He felt that "despite the injection of 'contemporary' and 'mature' situations, the mix of regular prime-time TV is no less banal or blatantly manipulative than it ever was." However, another critic, Ron Power of the Chicago Sun-Times, cited a new troubling trend in network programming—violence and sadism. Adopting a highly alarmist stance, Power published what was, in essence, an angry manifesto blasting the networks:
Power called for "organized reform" by both the media as well as those who viewed their product and patronized their sponsors—and his was not a lone voice. TV/movie director Buzz Kulik stated: "I don't care what anyone says. I think there's a connection between television violence and real violence. You just can't differentiate between the real and the unreal." That connection between the reality of violence and the illusion of fictional mayhem on TV reverberated in news headlines throughout the fall of 1973. For example, there were a number of reports about youth gangs pouring gasoline on helpless victims and setting them aflame. These incidents occurred in various parts of the country. In one instance, a young Boston woman was forced by 6 youths to "douse herself with two gallons of gasoline" before they "then set her afire." In the South, "four teenagers set fire to a sleeping derelict" in Miami. Even an interracial couple in Fort Lauderdale suffered the same cruel fate. Furthermore, it was pointed out that these attacks occurred almost immediately after "a television showing of the movie Fuzz which depicted similar violence"—specifically, a scene in which one of the characters is doused with a flammable fluid and then ignited. Thus, as in the year before, the stage was set for more debates centering on the issue of censorship and network film telecasts.
Amid such controversy, CBS ordered its film cutters to work. The Thursday Night Movie's slate for the 1973-74 season included two of the most violent films of the Sixties—Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde and Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch. Both of these works had been championed by critics as masterpieces that used violence to make valid artistic statements about the American contemporary scene. In spite of this, however, the two movies underwent radical cutting. But according to some in the audience, the network went too far, especially with the Peckinpah film. One viewer complained that "when the censors at CBS snipped, they snipped without thinking, blindly...CBS did not show The Wild Bunch at all. Instead they showed some mutilated mess that once had been a masterful original." Another viewer protested that the network's broadcast of the controversial western "amounted to little more than showing snippets, rather like coming attraction footage...I have never seen any film so extensively cut." For CBS, therefore, the new fall season of 1973 got off to a very rocky start.
But ultimately it was also a successful one. Screenings of the first two Planet of the Apes films shot CBS to the top of the charts during that same period. And with Steve McQueen's box-office smash, Bullitt, as well as Dustin Hoffman's breakthrough performance as The Graduate and the Clint Eastwood action-adventure Kelly's Heroes leading a pack of hit premieres, it was one of the Thursday Night Movie's most robust seasons. It was also a good year for the network's made-for-TV films, largely due to the January 31, 1974 premiere of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, which was greeted with near-unanimous praise by critics like Jay Sharbutt, who called the work "profoundly moving...it's the only description that seems to fit this production." And Pauline Kael of the New Yorker, who devoted her entire weekly column to the film, praised John Korty's understated direction as well as Cicely Tyson's performance, for which she would win the Emmy Award for Best Actress in a Special Program.
Thursdays :
  1. 1973-09-13: The Hot Rock
  2. 1973-09-20: Bonnie and Clyde
  3. 1973-09-27: Kelly's Heroes, Part 1
  4. 1973-10-04: The Wild Bunch
  5. 1973-10-11: Pre-empted for CBS Special Presentations
  6. 1973-10-18: Joy in the Morning
  7. 1973-10-25: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
  8. 1973-11-01: Bullitt
  9. 1973-11-08: The Graduate
  10. 1973-11-15: Pre-empted by CBS Special Presentations
  11. 1973-11-22: Duel at Diablo
  12. 1973-11-29: Pre-empted for CBS Specials
  13. 1973-12-06: Pre-empted by CBS specials
  14. 1973-12-13: The Last Escape
  15. 1973-12-20: Gunfight at the OK Corral
  16. 1973-12-27: Oklahoma!
  17. 1974-01-03: Don't Drink the Water
  18. 1974-01-10: Pre-empted for CBS Specials
  19. 1974-01-17:
  20. 1974-01-24: Valley of the Dolls
  21. 1974-01-31: The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
  22. 1974-02-07: Kansas City Bomber
  23. 1974-02-14: Ryan's Daughter
  24. 1974-02-21: Wild Rovers
  25. 1974-02-28: Hello, Dolly!
  26. 1974-03-07: Marriage Times Four
  27. 1974-03-14: Birds of Prey
  28. 1974-03-21:
  29. 1974-03-28: Pre-empted for CBS Special Presentations
  30. 1974-04-04:
  31. 1974-04-11:
  32. 1974-04-18: Pre-empted for a CBS Sports Special
  33. 1974-04-25: The Last Escape
  34. 1974-05-02:
  35. 1974-05-09: The McKenzie Break
  36. 1974-05-16: Pre-empted for CBS Special Presentations
  37. 1974-05-23: Joy in the Morning
  38. 1974-05-30: Kill a Dragon
Fridays :
  1. 1973-09-14: Planet of the Apes
  2. 1973-09-21: Tora! Tora! Tora!
  3. 1973-09-28: Kelly's Heroes, Part 2
  4. 1973-10-05: The Wrecking Crew
  5. 1973-10-12: '
  6. 1973-10-19: Pre-empted for CBS Special Presentations
  7. 1973-10-26: Beneath the Planet of the Apes
  8. 1973-11-02: Pre-empted for CBS Special Presentations
  9. 1973-11-09:
  10. 1973-11-16: Escape from the Planet of the Apes
  11. 1973-11-23: To Sir, with Love
  12. 1973-11-30: In Cold Blood
  13. 1973-12-07: The Homecoming: A Christmas Story
  14. 1973-12-14:
  15. 1973-12-21: The Chairman
  16. 1973-12-28: Pre-empted by CBS Reports
  17. 1974-01-04: The Gypsy Moths
  18. 1974-01-11: Hawaii
  19. 1974-01-18: The Undefeated
  20. 1974-01-25: The Marcus-Nelson Murders
  21. 1974-02-01: Pre-empted for a CBS Reports Special
  22. 1974-02-08:
  23. 1974-02-15: Halls of Anger
  24. 1974-02-22: Pre-empted by a G.E. Theater special presentation
  25. 1974-03-01: Lawman
  26. 1974-03-08: Pre-empted for CBS Special Presentations
  27. 1974-03-15: The Sweet Ride
  28. 1974-03-22: '
  29. 1974-03-29: Pre-empted for CBS Special Presentations
  30. 1974-04-05:
  31. 1974-04-12: Ben-Hur
  32. 1974-04-19:
  33. 1974-04-26: Pre-empted for a CBS News Special
  34. 1974-05-03: Pre-empted for a CBS Sports Special
  35. 1974-05-10: Pre-empted for a CBS Sports Special
  36. 1974-05-17: Captain Nemo and the Underwater City
  37. 1974-05-24:
  38. 1974-05-31: Honor Thy Father
Thus, for the 1973–74 season, from mid-September until the end of May, The CBS Thursday Night Movie premiered only 22 theatrical titles. The remainder of the total 76 telecasts were either reruns of theatrical films from previous seasons; reruns or premieres of made-for-TV films; TV pilot episodes for projected series; or pre-emptions for CBS news, sports, or variety specials. When compared with the total of 52 theatrical-film premieres that the network aired during the 1966-67 season, one can observe that the number of available films for first-time broadcast had dropped by well over 50 percent. However, CBS did schedule four additional new titles to fill its roster during the summer of 1974. These included the June 6 TV premiere of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, featuring Maggie Smith's Academy Award-winning performance as an unorthodox teacher in a 1930s Edinburgh girls' school. There was also the June 14th television debut of The Looking Glass War, based on a John le Carré spy novel and starring Christopher Jones. And to round out its list of the season's newcomers, the Richard Burton film Villain premiered June 27, while the medieval drama Alfred the Great, with David Hemmings in the title role, made its bow the next evening.
In the fall of 1974, one of CBS's competitors, NBC, premiered the TV-movie, Born Innocent. The film was the beneficiary of an intense promotional campaign by the network, as well as a provocative disclaimer just before its broadcast. And when it finally aired, viewers were exposed to what, up until then, was one of the most graphic depictions of sadism and cruelty ever presented on the small screen. The story's heroine, a teen-ager serving time inside a juvenile detention center for young women, becomes the victim of sexual assault when she is forcibly violated with a foreign object by a gang of the institution's most violent inmates. A few weeks after the film's broadcast, a 9-year-old girl, walking with a friend along a San Francisco beach, was subjected to a similar act by a trio of teen-age boys. When the young perpetrators were questioned by authorities as to the reason they had chosen this method of attack, they freely admitted having been inspired by the film's controversial scene. Later that year, the mother of the victim sued NBC, claiming the organization was "responsible for this rape because the network had studies showing that children and susceptible people might imitate crimes seen on TV." The case was eventually thrown out of court, and an appeals panel would later affirm the lower court's judgment to nonsuit, but by then NBC had re-edited the scene for the movie's repeat airing. This case represented one of several legal skirmishes resulting from the television industry's decision to accommodate what CBS president Robert Wood had earlier described as "the changing tastes and standards of society and the growing maturity" of a 1970s audience.
In a way, Born Innocent represented a trend with which American cineastes had become all too familiar—specifically, the W.I.P. subgenre of films. Exploitation of the lucrative "women in prison" premise had reached a point where advertisements for theatrical B-movies, with titles such as Caged Heat, The Big Bird Cage, and Women in Cages, became a familiar and titillating sight on just about every newspaper's amusement pages. Of course, a film like Born Innocent, a work produced specifically for television, could hardly resort to the kind of explicit sadism characteristic of the usual drive-in movie fodder. But NBC's film was sensational enough for CBS to program a copycat version that was aired on the Friday Night Movie just 6 months later. This new TV-film was titled Cage Without a Key and, again, it was set in a prison for young women. The heroine is unwittingly involved in a crime planned and carried out by others. Convicted and sentenced, she is incarcerated in a venue where the inmates' favorite pastime is gang activity. Although St. Petersburg TV critic Charles Benbow argued that this new TV-film "differs significantly" from Born Innocent, author Elana Levine observed that "Cage features a post-shower, same-sex sexual assault scene that leaves its victim shaken and distraught, and in that respect it clearly follows Born Innocent's formula." And author Stephen Tropiano noted the attempt by both films to marginalize lesbians as predatory sex offenders.
As for the rest of its 1974-75 roster, the CBS Thursday Night Movies started well enough with Robert Altman's original film version of M*A*S*H, along with an amiable trio of satirical westerns. But aside from that, there was little the network could offer its viewers. Hollywood product that could be suitably packaged for TV audiences was becoming a rare commodity. And as a result, this would be the final full season for CBS's Thursday night movies.
Thursdays :
  1. 1974-09-12: Pre-empted for CBS Special Presentation
  2. 1974-09-19: Support Your Local Gunfighter
  3. 1974-09-26: Skin Game
  4. 1974-10-03: The Hawaiians
  5. 1974-10-10: The Good Guys and the Bad Guys
  6. 1974-10-17: Sunshine
  7. 1974-10-24: The Cheyenne Social Club
  8. 1974-10-31: Cold Turkey
  9. 1974-11-07: How Sweet It Is!
  10. 1974-11-14: Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
  11. 1974-11-21: Pre-empted for a CBS Special Presentation
  12. 1974-11-28: Pre-empted for a CBS Special Presentation
  13. 1974-12-05: Pre-empted for a CBS Special Presentation
  14. 1974-12-12: The Professionals
  15. 1974-12-19: Catlow
  16. 1974-12-26: Wild Rovers
  17. 1975-01-02: The Wild Bunch
  18. 1975-01-09: Pre-empted by a CBS Special Presentation
  19. 1975-01-16: The Mephisto Waltz
  20. 1975-01-23: Mackenna's Gold
  21. 1975-01-30: The Family
  22. 1975-02-06: Dirty Dingus Magee
  23. 1975-02-13: Queen of the Stardust Ballroom
  24. 1975-02-20: ' Part 1.
  25. 1975-02-27: In This House of Brede
  26. 1975-03-06: Pre-empted for a CBS Special Presentation
  27. 1975-03-13: Lawman
  28. 1975-03-20: Pre-empted by CBS Special Presentations
  29. 1975-03-27: Pre-empted by CBS Special Presentations
  30. 1975-04-03:
  31. 1975-04-10: Pre-empted for a CBS News Special
  32. 1975-04-17: The Hot Rock
  33. 1975-04-24: The Good Guys and the Bad Guys
  34. 1975-05-01: Hawaii
  35. 1975-05-08: Generation
  36. 1975-05-15:
  37. 1975-05-22: It's Good to Be Alive
  38. 1975-05-29: The Great White Hope
  39. 1975-06-05: '
  40. 1975-06-12: They Call Me Trinity
  41. 1975-06-19: One is a Lonely Number
Fridays :
  1. 1974-09-13: M*A*S*H
  2. 1974-09-20: Willard
  3. 1974-09-27: Bonnie and Clyde
  4. 1974-10-04: Bullitt
  5. 1974-10-11:
  6. 1974-10-18:
  7. 1974-10-25: They Only Kill Their Masters
  8. 1974-11-01: The Graduate
  9. 1974-11-08:
  10. 1974-11-15: The Stalking Moon
  11. 1974-11-22: C.C. & Company
  12. 1974-11-29:
  13. 1974-12-06: The Carey Treatment
  14. 1974-12-13: Pre-empted for a CBS Special Presentation
  15. 1974-12-20: Kansas City Bomber
  16. 1974-12-27: The Last Run
  17. 1975-01-03: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
  18. 1975-01-10: Pre-empted for a CBS Special Presentation
  19. 1975-01-17: Battle for the Planet of the Apes /Shaft
  20. 1975-01-24: Kelly's Heroes
  21. 1975-01-31: Pre-empted for CBS Special Presentations
  22. 1975-02-07: Dillinger
  23. 1975-02-14:
  24. 1975-02-21: ' Part 2.
  25. 1975-02-28: Golden Needles
  26. 1975-03-07: Soylent Green
  27. 1975-03-14: Cage Without a Key
  28. 1975-03-21: Pre-empted for CBS Special Presentations
  29. 1975-03-28:
  30. 1975-04-04: The Other
  31. 1975-04-11: Pre-empted for CBS Special Presentations
  32. 1975-04-18: Pre-empted by CBS Sports Special
  33. 1975-04-25: Planet of the Apes
  34. 1975-05-02: The Wrecking Crew
  35. 1975-05-09: /
  36. 1975-05-16: Don't Drink the Water /Going Home
  37. 1975-05-23: Pre-empted for a CBS Sports Special
  38. 1975-05-30: '
  39. 1975-06-06: The Games /Zig Zag
  40. 1975-06-13: One More Time /The People Next Door
  41. 1975-06-20: The Boy Friend /Mrs. Pollifax
Since 1970, it had become customary for CBS to sprinkle its summer movie-rerun schedule with occasional first-time showings. Thus, in addition to the eight premieres in early June, there was also the July 18 TV debut of The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz, starring Elke Sommer as an East German athlete who fantasizes pole-vaulting over the Berlin Wall to the other side. If this movie seemed like an extended TV comedy, it may have been due to the presence of several actors from the defunct Hogan's Heroes television series, including Ms. Sommers's co-star Bob Crane, along with the show's other regulars, Werner Klemperer, John Banner, and Leon Askin.

Fall 1975: The end

During the summer of 1975, all three networks decided to cut one movie night per week from their fall prime-time schedules. For CBS, it was a choice of keeping either a Thursday-night or a Friday-night anthology. The network chose to retain Thursday. As CBS program director Fred Silverman explained, "There aren't that many good pictures to begin with...We'd rather take those 2 hours and do original television programming. Because finally that's what television is all about: Creating new material for the viewer at home." Apparently, Mr. Silverman's idea of "creating new material" was the programming of more episodes for two old crime serials, Hawaii Five-O and Barnaby Jones—because beginning in September, that was what Friday night viewers were offered. But in cutting back the airing of theatrical films to its original movie-night, CBS may have provided some consolation for film buffs. There were fewer reruns of old product and less pre-emptions for news and variety specials. In that respect, the Fall 1975 season of The Thursday Night Movie would resemble the format of its maiden Fall 1965 schedule—one where viewers could feel reasonably confident that Thursday's 9:00-11:00 pm time slot would be reserved only for movies.
To be sure, there were still occasional made-for-TV premieres, such as the sports biography , starring Susan Clark as the multi-talented athlete Babe Didrikson. In fact, this production was nearly doomed before it began. Earlier, when Babe's co-producer Stanley Rubin tried repeatedly to convince Didrikson's widower/husband George Zaharias to sell him the exclusive rights to her story, he flatly refused. As Rubin later recalled, "He said he had several opportunities to sell Babe's story. Once, he had gotten badly burned in some deal. So he was understandably leery of the whole thing." One Saturday, however, Zaharias relented and phoned Rubin, granting him permission for the story, but only if he hand-delivered a cashier's check by that very afternoon. Since few banks were open for business on weekends, Rubin was barely able to make it to Zaharias's residence in time with the necessary check to close the deal. As it turned out, Babe's reviews were quite good. Syndicated columnist Joan Hanauer, for example, praised writer Joanna Lee's scenario. She stated that even if Babe's story "loses in suspense because the end is preordained, gains in poignancy because Babe was a real woman...whose beautifully functioning body was no more able to conquer cancer than those of her weaker sisters." It was positive critical reaction such as this that made Rubin's persistence pay off.
There was also the world premiere of the TV-movie , which has been described by film critic James Monaco as "CBS's mea culpa about how it contributed to the anticommunist blacklisting" of media personalities during the 1950s. But as author Robert Sherill pointed out, "No matter how much pain they inflicted on individuals, corporations could always find a way to profit from their Cold War perfidy." Sherill further argued that CBS's new film did exactly that—by taking the real-life case of persecuted radio entertainer John Henry Faulk and dramatizing his battle in court, where he is ably represented by high-powered lawyer Louis Nizer. Although the film carries an upbeat message, the reality of the trial's aftermath was far different. Faulk's cash judgment of $3.5 million was later reduced considerably on appeal. After paying his attorney, Faulk wound up with only $75,000, most of which was spent on alimony payments. Later, as if to atone for its past mistreatment, CBS offered Faulk a job as a regular on Hee Haw.
Thursdays :
  1. 1975-09-11: Cahill: U.S. Marshal
  2. 1975-09-18: Red Sun
  3. 1975-09-25: Conrack
  4. 1975-10-02:
  5. 1975-10-09: Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
  6. 1975-10-16: They Only Kill Their Masters
  7. 1975-10-23:
  8. 1975-10-30: The French Connection
  9. 1975-11-06: Mr. Majestyk
  10. 1975-11-13: Pre-empted for CBS Special Presentation
  11. 1975-11-20: Hannie Caulder
And that was it. At mid-season, CBS made a change. Friday, it was decided, would become the lone designated prime-time movie night for the network, beginning December 5. Thus, after over ten consecutive seasons on the air, The CBS Thursday Night Movie would come to an end. Perhaps it was just as well because at the same time, VHS and Betamax videocassette recorders were just being introduced into the American marketplace, enabling consumers to either rent or purchase copies of movies for in-home viewing, uncensored and without commercial interruptions. The so-called "video revolution" had begun. Moreover, there were the recent start-ups of pay-TV networks such as Home Box Office and The Movie Channel, both showcasing uncut versions of recent movies on cable systems across the country. Such attractive innovations in programming were sounding a death knell for network prime-time film anthologies; they had become essentially obsolete and were on a slow path to extinction. Therefore, in a historical context, the cancellation of the CBS Thursday Night Movie was more than just another programming strategy. It was a move that signaled the end of one television era and the beginning of the next.