The Abc Movie Of The Week

This book looks at the cultural impact of the ABC Movie of the Week, the first weekly movies series made for television, which began in 1969 and ran for six years. Films that debuted on the program include Brian’s Song, That Certain Summer, The Night Stalker, Trilogy of Terror, Go Ask Alice, The Six Million Dollar Man, and Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (remade as a 2011 feature film).

Movies made for television were in their infancy when ABC came up with a novel idea: a weekly series of films made exclusively for the small screen. The ABC Movie of the Week became a great success and a cultural touchstone for a generation of Americans. In this loving tribute to the classic series of TV films, more than two hundred films in the series are reviewed, including well-remembered titles such as Duel, Tribes, The Six Million Dollar Man, Go Ask Alice, Brian's Song, The Night Stalker, Bad Ronald, Starsky and Hutch, Trilogy of Terror, That Certain Summer, and Killdozer. In addition, choice bits of trivia about the actors and films and exclusive pictures are sprinkled throughout the book. So bit back, relax, and return to a time when the counterculture was in full swing and you could tune in every week for one or more original films made just for you.

If the made-for-television movie has long been regarded as a poor stepchild of the film industry, then telefilm horror has been the most uncelebrated offspring of all. Considered unworthy of critical attention, scary movies made for television have received little notice over the years. Yet millions of fans grew up watching them—especially during the 1970s—and remember them fondly. This exhaustive survey addresses the lack of critical attention by evaluating such films on their own merits. Covering nearly 150 made-for-TV fright movies from the 1970s, the book includes credits, a plot synopsis, and critical commentary for each. From the well-remembered Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark to the better-forgotten Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby, it’s a trustworthy and entertaining guide to the golden age of the televised horror movie.

Description: TV Still (Movie).

ABC Sports shaped how the world consumes sport. The American Broadcasting Company's sports division is behind some of network television's most significant practices, celebrated personalities, and iconic moments. It created the weekend anthology Wide World of Sports, transformed professional football into a prime-time spectacle with Monday Night Football, fashioned the Olympics into a mega media event, and even revolutionized TV news. Travis Vogan's cultural and institutional history of ABC Sports examines the development of network sports television in the United States and the aesthetic, cultural, political, and industrial practices that mark it. ABC Sports traces the storied division from its beginnings through the internet age to reveal the changes it endured along with the new sports media environment it spawned.

From Double Indemnity (1944) to The Godfather (1972), the stories behind some of the greatest films ever made pale beside the story of the studio that made them. In the golden age of Hollywood, Paramount was one of the Big Five studios. Gulf + Western's 1966 takeover of the studio signaled the end of one era and heralded the arrival of a new way of doing business in Hollywood. Bernard F. Dick reconstructs the battle that reduced the studio to a mere corporate commodity and traces Paramount's devolution from freestanding studio to subsidiary—first of Gulf + Western, then of Paramount Communications, and currently, of Viacom-CBS. Dick portrays the new Paramount as a paradigm of today's Hollywood, where the only real art is the art of the deal. In modern Hollywood, former merchandising executives find themselves in charge of production on the assumption that anyone who can sell a movie can make one. CEOs exit in disgrace from one studio, only to emerge in triumph at another. Corporate raiders vie for power and control, purchasing and selling film libraries, studio property, television stations, book publishers, and more. The history of Paramount is filled with larger-than-life people, including Billy Wilder, Adolph Zukor, Sumner Redstone, Shari Redstone, Sherry Lansing, Barry Diller, Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and more.

Gomery (The coming of sound to the American cinema, 1975; The Hollywood studio system, 1986) draws upon his earlier work and that of other scholars to address the broader social functions of the film industry, showing how Hollywood adapted its business policies to diversity and change within American society. Includes 31 bandw photographs. Paper edition (unseen), $15.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR