The Broadcast Log: NBC Saturday Night at the Movies, 1969–70

NBC Saturday Night at the Movies

1969–70: The fall of 1969 was included a TV milestone: 1,000 broadcasts of post-1948 movies. The achievement took the Big Three a mere 8 years. Despite mixed results overall, NBC stuck with its three nights of movies of Monday, Tuesday, and Saturday. To keep the number of new titles low, Monday included semi-regular Bob Hope specials and Tuesday had First Tuesdays once a month while Saturday repeated previous seasons' movies. A few years ago, that could've been an expensive solution, but now the price of Hollywood movies was dropping. In three years, the cost had dropped 25%. The market had become too flooded. This fall, NBC's asking price for 1-minute of advertising was $53,000 on Monday and Tuesday and $60,000 on Saturday.

Saturdays: Perhaps playing against the competition, this season's Saturday lineup was largely absent of typical Hollywood comedies. Instead, there were more thrills and adventure, and note the release dates; some of the movies were in theaters only a year prior, often British imports. They were becoming more common to use to fill the lineup. Since Saturday didn't having any specials or recurring series, there were 5 movie repeats, all movies that aired during the prior season, so it'd been several months since they last aired. And after stumbling a bit last season, NBC Saturday Night at the Movies was back in the top 30 programs. Despite their overabundance, movies were popular with viewers.

The Broadcast Log: NBC Saturday Night at the Movies, 1968–69

NBC Saturday Night at the Movies

1968–69: The massive success of the '67–'68 season, alongside a solid stockpile of TV movies and plans for a monthly long-form news series, prompted NBC to add a third movie night. After 4 seasons away, the movies were back on Monday. Through the three evenings, NBC would insert more occasional specials giving the movies off-weeks. Nevertheless, the number of good, recognizable movies titles continued to thin, and while successful in filling time and satisfying its audiences, the ratings for its movies declined. However, NBC was putting a bigger target on young people, which led to higher ad rates. In that sense, the nights were successful.

On Saturday: Unlike Monday and Tuesday, NBC only aired one night of specials during the season, instead airing a couple movie repeats to fill a full schedule, but also still airing a fairly strong 25 movies, 4 of which were made-for-TV from Universal. One was a pilot that went to series.

With NBC continuing to mine United Artists' library for movies, not all of their titles were television premieres. While Some Like It Hot, The Misfits, and Birdman of Alcatraz, among others, were quite popular, they had previously aired on ABC. Of the 25 movies, 14 were from United Artists and 9, including those made for TV, were from Universal.

The Broadcast Log: NBC Saturday Night at the Movies, 1967–68

NBC Saturday Night at the Movies

With a 23.6 Nielsen rating for the season, this season was the peak for NBC Saturday Night at the Movies.

NBC had hopes for their nights. Affiliates pushed back on adding more commercials, so NBC increased its advertising rate. One minute was $57,000 on either Tuesday or Saturday. The two movie nights were successful enough, by January, NBC planned to add a third movie night to the fall schedule.

While 1 movie from United Artist aired on Tuesdays, 5 aired on Saturdays, the first bigger showcase of a deal that was to last well into the next decade, plus another one was set with Universal, which was behind 17 of this season's Saturday titles. Of the 3 other movies, 2 were from 20th Century Fox and 1 was from Warner Bros. — Saratoga Trunk, the oldest movie NBC would air under the banner. (Of note, the cost of Hollywood movies was soaring. CBS was paying MGM about $800,000 per movie, twice the average price in 1965.)

While comedy was the most dominant genre on the schedule, it also included some high profile dramatic and thriller titles, including Mirage and Freud. There was even a musical, Flower Drum Song. But no movie would do nearly as well as The Birds, which set records.

The Broadcast Log: NBC Saturday Night at the Movies, 1966–67

NBC Saturday Night at the Movies

The battle for the top TV movies was on. (See Tuesday intro)

NBC's first original movie of the season and first one in nearly two years was the detective/reporter drama Fame Is the Name of the Game. It was followed in following months by How I Spent My Summer Vacation, The Longest Hundred Miles, and The Borgia Stick, and adding to the four (The Doomsday Flight, Wings of Fire, Winchester 73, and Ironside) that aired on Tuesday — and all aired under the NBC World Premiere banner. Fame and Ironside were picked up to series for the following season, and Universal found a new business venture: cranking out TV movies for NBC. By summer 1967, more than a dozen were in the pipeline.

In the ratings, the 8 movies averaged 23.9/40, above the average theatrical movie. As far as NBC was concerned, it would take Universal's movies for as long as it would produce them.

With the drying up of and increasing price of popular theatrical movies, NBC also went to Universal for its movie catalog for new titles, ending its agreement with MGM. The era of 30 movies per season was over. 28 movies aired this season — 15 from Paramount, 12 from Universal (8 theatrical, 4 TV movies), and 1 in-house  Can anyone explain that one? There were also a few repeats during the season.

The Broadcast Log: NBC Saturday Night at the Movies, 1965–66

NBC Saturday Night at the Movies

Back for a fifth season, NBC Saturday Night at the Movies comes out swinging with several titles that are still well thought of today. Unlike Tuesday night's selection, Saturday was for prestige movies as well as some other miscellaneous titles that covers several genres, especially musicals and comedies.

Like last season, the movies come from the MGM and Paramount vaults, and include such titles as A Place in the Sun and Vertigo and Billy Wilder classics Stalag 17, Ace in the Hole, and Sunset Boulevard. While there aren't many high-tier musicals and comedies, the stars include Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez, Bob Hope, and Danny Kaye.

And like previous seasons, many of the 30 total movies ran over the allotted two-hour timeslot and 11 are black and white.

The Broadcast Log: NBC Saturday Night at the Movies, 1964–65

NBC Saturday Night at the Movies

As stated Wednesday, NBC wasn't in the best shape by the mid-'60s, but the network carried on with its popular Saturday Night at the Movies. While Wednesday featured the first made for TV movies and plenty of dramatic titles, Saturday featured bigger spectacles and plenty of titles that are remembered today, 55 years later. 

The three-season deal with Fox expired, so to fill the movie schedule along side MGM titles, Paramount's library was mined for 31 of the 60 new movies airing on Wednesday and Saturday this season. The Saturday lineup is largely bigger, lavish movies covering several genres, but much more variety than Wednesdays. Here you find plenty of musicals and comedies alongside westerns and war flicks. (White Christmas, Last Train from Gun Hill, Adam's Rib, Bad Day at Black Rock, Annie Get Your Gun)

The Broadcast Log: NBC's Saturday Night at the Movies, 1963-64

NBC's Saturday Night at the Movies (via CLG)

In its third season — as mentioned in Monday's log — movie nights now included some MGM titles, comprising 29 of the 60 theatrical movies for NBC's 1963-64 season. Having some movies from MGM also (in retrospective?) helped lift the night with more memorable titles. Fox still offered a few, including The Asphalt Jungle and Let's Make Love.

The Saturday lineup continued to have movies that ran well over the two-hour timeslot. It also featured more dramatic movies than Monday, which usually had lighter movies. Saturday had its share of lighter movies, too, but also had its share of movies with dramatic subject matter, like The Diary of Anne Frank and Wild River.

Like the previous two season's, the premiere movie was a Marilyn Monroe movie, The Seven Year Itch. Though in a change from previous seasons, the summer repeats were a mix of movies from Monday and Saturday.

The Broadcast Log: NBC's Saturday Night at the Movies, 1962–63

NBC's Saturday Night at the Movies (via CLG)

Entering its second season, NBC's Saturday Night at the Movies wasn't a regular ratings powerhouse, but it had great name recognition and strong appeal to younger viewers. It was also a strong counter to CBS' dominant lineup of The Defenders, Have Gun Will Travel and Gunsmoke. None of the networks changed their lineup's latter half of Saturday night going into fall 1962. ABC stuck with Lawrence Welk, The Fight of the Week, and Make That Spare.

Like season one, all 30 titles for season two of Saturday Night at the Movies were from the 20th Century Fox catalog and were scheduled for two hours, though also like season one, several ran long. There remained a good variety in the titles, but some genres were much more represented. Science fiction was gone and comedy films were few. The creation of the Monday movie at midseason seemed to have an effect, too, as the number of adventure movies on Saturday dropped. Airing unedited, the 30 movies aired without break for 30 weeks. Two-thirds of the movies were in color.

The Broadcast Log: NBC's Saturday Night at the Movies, 1961–62

NBC's Saturday Night at the Movies (via CLG)

Welcome to the first of many posts about the movies NBC has aired through the years. I've been collecting information about the Peacock Network's movie listings (title, year, TV runtime) for years, and I always like having my TV listing collection backed-up somewhere. So this is it, and if you have any corrections please let me know in the comments. I don't consider my research foolproof.

Sources: All the links in the movie listings are for your convenience if you want to learn more about the movie. The synopses are pulled from IMDb, and the listed cast are (usually) the key names on the movie poster. The genre is usually a compromise between IMDb and Wikipedia. For the early years, I note if a movie color or black-and-white. The listed runtime is how long the movie ran on NBC. This is a season with a list that is readily available, but I still double checked the titles, which were primarily from the Cedar Rapids Gazette and the San Bernardino Sun. However, the overruns (movies that ran more than NBC's allotted two hours) rarely has a clear consensus. I found confirmations for the Wikipedia entries, which cites The Lima News, but variations of five or 10 minutes were common to find. Others often search included The Capital Journal (Salem, OR), San Antonio Light, Detroit Free Press, Austin Daily Herald, and The Tampa Bay Times, among others. 

To the movies!