The ABC Movie of the Week. Big Movies for the Small Screen

413 Pages·2012·4.11 MB·English

by  Michael McKenna

The ABC Movie of the Week
Big Movies for the Small Screen
Michael McKenna
THE SCARECROW PRESS, INC.
Lanham • Toronto • Plymouth, UK
2013
Published by Scarecrow Press, Inc.
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Copyright © 2013 by The Scarecrow Press, Inc.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McKenna, Michael, 1969-
The ABC movie of the week : big movies for the small screen / Michael McKenna. pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8108-9156-2 (cloth : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-8108-9157-9 (ebook) 1. Made for TV movies--
United States. 2. Television broadcasting of films--Social aspects--United States. 3. ABC Television
Network. I. Title.
PN1992.8.F5M37 2013
791.45'75'0973--dc23
2013013843
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard
for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
To my mother, Maureen, for letting me watch too much TV
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my editor, Stephen Ryan, for inspiring this book and
having faith in me to deliver. I would also like to thank all of the Movie of the
Week fans who take the time to post their favorite films on streaming websites
for all to view. Without their commitment, many of these films would be
inaccessible to the general public forever.
Introduction
In November 1974, Jerry Buck, a nationally syndicated television writer for
the Associated Press, wrote a retrospective article on the establishment of the
made-for-TV movie as a staple of network television. Buck was no doubt
motivated by the prolific production of over 400 made-for-TV movies aired by
the three major American networks in the previous five years. Buck’s article
encapsulates how most critics viewed the TV movie at the time, and
concurrently, the historical reputation of the genre. Buck’s analysis reveals an
already standardized hierarchical segregation between “quality” TV movies and
those labeled as “B movies,” the appellation applied to poorly made, low-quality
feature films churned out by Hollywood. His assessment of the TV movie genre
was standard form: “At its best, it is thought provoking, diverse, offering in-depth
character study. At its worst, it is cliché ridden and melodramatic.” Buck then
provides a perfect tagline to sum up the critical consensus on the TV movie,
“Nobody liked it but the audience.”[1]
The degraded cultural and critical status of the TV movie has contributed to
an ambivalent, if not dismissive attitude on the part of popular culture scholars
toward the genre as a whole. The result is a dearth of cultural studies on the
formative years of this important development in television history. The paucity
of dedicated TV movie studies is particularly glaring when compared with the
voluminous work on other topics in television studies, not to mention the
endless studies done on the TV movie’s distant cousin, theatrical feature films.
Here again, when compared with feature films, the TV movie comes up against
a seeming scholarly elitism wherein feature films are considered art, cultural
barometers worthy of study and analysis, while TV movies are marked as the
basest commerce not worthy of academic study, but rather to be deposited on
the scrapheap of nostalgia and kitsch. For those who may doubt the cultural
significance and reach of the TV movie, consider that in the mid-1970s, as the
genre was proliferating, a TV movie might have been deemed a ratings
disappointment if it had only drawn an audience of twelve to thirteen million
viewers. In the modern medium, with a larger, although fragmented audience,
an equivalent viewership would almost surely land in the top ten rated programs
for a week. It should also be noted, the collective viewership of TV movies in
the 1970s far outpaced the number of people viewing feature films in a theatre
setting. The cumulative analysis affirms that TV movies were being consumed
by millions of Americans, and, therefore, the cultural reach is widespread, far
exceeding feature films. Nevertheless, based on the limited scholarly work
produced, the genre is evidently still not deemed worthy of deeper study and
analysis.
Despite the above critique on the lack of TV movie studies, there are a
collection of valuable and widely cited works that engage the genre. These
works fall into two categories. The first category encompasses works focusing
on individual TV movies or small groups of TV movies primarily used to amplify
a broader cultural study (e.g., gender, race, sexuality, etc.). Prominent works in
this category include Douglas Gomery’s Brian Song: Television, Hollywood, and
the Evolution of the Movie Made for Television; a chapter dedicated to TV
movies in Todd Gitlin’s influential book, Inside Prime Time; several segments in
Elana Levine’s Wallowing in Sex, a study of the sexual culture of America in the
1970s; Sally Bedell’s Up the Tube, which has a chapter on the evolution of the
TV movie; and television writers and producers Richard Link’s and William
Levinson’s Stay Tuned, an excellent firsthand account on TV movie production
and the politics of network television.[2] The second category of TV movie
studies, even more sparse than the first, features works more broadly dedicated
to the TV movie. The most widely cited works in this category include Gary
Edgerton’s journal article, High Concept, Small Screen; Elayne Rapping’s book,
The Movie of the Week; and Alvin H. Marill’s, Movies Made for Television, a
monumental multivolume filmography of every made-for-TV movie aired on
American television from 1964–2004.[3]
Most of the critical and scholarly attention given to TV movies is focused on
a relative handful of movies that became the standard bearers of the genre.
Over several decades since the emergence of the genre, a number of TV
movies and miniseries movies such as My Sweet Charlie, Brian ’ s Song, That
Certain Summer, Roots, The Burning Bed, and Angels in America, to name a
few, have been lauded by critics and examined by scholars. However, given the
volume of TV movies produced (more than five thousand in total), only a small
percentage have been researched and analyzed on an academic level.
Typically, the TV movies receiving critical acclaim or scholarly analysis deal with
or are used to illustrate arguments on major social issues such as race, gender,
sexual preference, poverty, and similar topics. There is sound reasoning for this
utility, as it is easier to take narrative and commercial risks in a TV movie. A
single-event production such as a TV movie can effectively present
controversial themes and characters without the impediment of preconceived
notions toward characters in a regularly scheduled series. Additionally, network
programmers only have to worry about a potential one-time ratings
disappointment, not a lingering taint of controversy or viewer disapproval that
might be attached to an established series, potentially limiting viewership in the
future. Thus, over time, made-for-TV movies became a valuable tool for
presenting alternative or divisive subject matter.[4] However, the vast majority of
TV movies are based on more mundane, superficial, even frivolous topics, and
thus are likely to be discarded as cultural detritus. Regrettably, this general
dismissal of the “lesser” TV movies ignores the reality that most people’s lives
are mundane, occasionally superficial, and frivolous. Accordingly, the mass of
viewers are much more likely to relate to, and be influenced by the lesser TV
movies. Therefore, instead of disregarding the lesser movies, it should be
asked, how did they reflect the lives of their audience? How did they influence
or shape the lives of the audience? With more dedicated studies, any number
of academic fields would glean a trove of insight on American opinions, mores,
and desires over four decades.
The effort to establish made-for-TV movies as a viable research topic leads
inexorably to the core of this book. Any broad study or understanding of the
formative years of the TV movie has to rely heavily on the American
Broadcasting Company’s Movie of the Week (ABC MOW) as the seminal
development in the genre. Over six television seasons, spanning 1969–1975,
the ABC MOW presented 240 films. Although made-for-TV movies had been
airing since 1964, there was only an average of eight TV movies aired per year.
The MOW would air twenty-five regularly scheduled movies in just its first
season. Later in the series run, the MOW would air a new movie two days a
week, reaching a peak of fifty-two movies in the fifth season. A quick ascension
into the top-ten rated programs on American television guaranteed the other
major networks would ramp up their output to capitalize on the viewing public’s
seeming insatiable appetite for the genre. By the final season of the MOW,
there were over 220 TV movies aired by the three major networks.[5] Not only
did the ABC MOW inspire the proliferation of made-for-TV movies, it provided
the generic terminology used to describe TV movies for decades to come. Just
as all petroleum jelly becomes “Vaseline” and any adhesive bandage becomes
a “Band-Aid,” every TV movie becomes a Movie of the Week in the lexicon of
television, both in the larger public, and within the industry. Given the stated
centrality of the MOW in the rise of the TV movie genre, this study hopes to
establish the ABC MOW as the transformative event in the emergence of a
television staple.
CAN THE ABC MOVIE OF THE WEEK BE TAKEN
SERIOUSLY?
One of the difficulties for an academician trying to analyze and contextualize
some aspects of popular culture, particularly one that is broadly popular
although not critically respected, is the effort to have the study taken seriously
by scholars, practitioners, and elements of the general public. To counter these
difficulties, scholars create or rely on established theory from their fields to
legitimize their work, and separate them from the nonacademic who writes
about popular culture. This of course, is a widely used and wholly appropriate
methodology. Nonetheless, there are some studies for which using a theoretical
approach feels like forcing a square peg into a round hole; essentially it reads
like an obligatory addition to forestall academic criticism. In her 1992 study of
the feminine character of the TV movie, Elayne Rapping brilliantly and
somewhat self-consciously acknowledged the difficulty of being a theoretician
writing about TV movies, particularly when you are an active viewer and fan of
the genre. Rapping addressed these concerns by dedicating an introductory
chapter to broader cultural theory, and an additional chapter using feminist
theory.[6]
A theory-laden analysis of the ABC MOW is possible, although difficult,
given the diversity of subject matter presented in 240 movies. If one were to
break down the ABC MOW into its component parts (individual movies or
grouping of movies), there would be ample opportunity for theoretical analysis
or documentary support for more specific studies on race, gender, collective
memory, and a variety of other fields. For those interested in a unified theory of
the ABC MOW, the most evident, and easily applicable theory would be some
variant of Antonio Gramsci’s views on the power of cultural hegemony applied
to the television medium in general, and the MOW of the week by implication.
Although not standard practice, the ABC MOW does provide a number of
examples where the hegemonic elite (networks and their various
constituencies) negotiate or relax their authority to allow alternative opinions,
discourses, and lifestyles. However, most informed observers would suggest
these deviations from the hegemonic norm are driven by commerce, or pursuit
of congratulation, not a genuine commitment to tolerance or acceptance of the
alternative.[7]
Given the aforementioned considerations, there is little pure theory in this
study; rather, it is a biography of the short life of a television series. As that
format dictates, there is an examination of the memorable events, people, and
achievements of the series. There is also an effort to place the series in a
cultural context, relative to the larger medium, and the sociocultural events of
American life. The book follows a linear path, beginning with an expository
prologue detailing the early history of the made-for-TV movie, as well as the
administrative and creative development of the series before it was aired.
Chapters one through six feature a season-by-season assessment of the
prominent and well-remembered movies, while also plotting the arc of the
series’s ratings success. The epilogue argues the extended legacy of the ABC
MOW, both in popular culture and the larger medium. For reference, the
appendices include a detailed filmography of every ABC MOW, a list of movies
serving as pilot films for prospective series, and a chronological list of the
movies’ original airdates.
Ideally, it is hoped this book will be a source of knowledge and insight into
one of the most impactful productions in the history of television while also
serving as a significant contribution to the study of the misunderstood and
underrepresented genre of the made-for-television film.
NOTES
1. Jerry Buck, “TV Movies Are Coming of Age,” Free Lance-Star (11 November
1974): 27.
2. Douglas Gomery, “Brian’s Song: Television, Hollywood, and the Evolution of
the Movie Made for Television,” in American History/American Television:
Interpreting the Video Past, ed. John E. O’Connor (New York: Frederick Ungar
Publishing Co., 1983), 208–231; Todd Gitlin, Inside Prime Time (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1983), 157–200; Elana Levine, Wallowing in Sex (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 2007); Sally Bedell, Up the Tube: Prime-Time TV
and the Silverman Years (New York: The Viking Press, 1981), 157–177;
Richard Levinson and William Link, Stay Tuned: An Inside Look at the Making
of Prime-Time Television (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981).
3. Gary Edgerton, “High Concept, Small Screen,” Journal of Popular Culture &
Television 19,no. 3 (Fall 1991): 114–127; Elayne Rapping, The Movie of the
Week: Private Stories/Public Events (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1992); Alvin H. Marill, Movies Made for Television (Lanham, MD:
Scarecrow Press, 2005); for a more nostalgic view of the ABC Movie of the
Week, see Michael Karol, The ABC Movie of the Week Companion (Lincoln,
NE: iUniverse, 2005).
4. Rapping, The Movie of the Week, 23.
5. For aggregate numbers of TV movies in a season, or total aired, see Marill,
Movies Made for Television.
6. Rapping, The Movie of the Week, xviii.
7. Aniko Bodroghkozy, Groove Tube: Sixties Television and the Youth Rebellion
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 16–20; Todd Gitlin, “Prime Time
Ideology: The Hegemonic Process in Television Entertainment,” Social
Problems 26, no. 3 (Feb. 1979): 256–257; Rapping, The Movie of the Week,
xvii–xliii.