On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 7:31 AM, Mark J. <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On Jan 12, 1:20 am, PGage <[email protected]> wrote: > > I second Kevin's motion for a "TV Movie of the Week" Channel. The wikis > have > > what looks like a pretty good article on the formal MOW series (which ran > > from 1969 - 1976). They list 255 movies. Some were crap, some were cheap > > thrills, some were pilots for series that later became famous, some were > > failed pilots, some were standard but entertaining melodramas, and some > were > > just damn fine films, including, of course, "Duel". > > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_Movie_of_the_Week > > It seems to me that the Encore/MoviePlex channels have long been > repositories for older made-fors, but of course you have to check the > listings, since they run along with the theatricals of older or recent > vintage. > > As for an MOW channel, with the networks losing their syndication > divisions in the early 70s as part of the prime access rule, Barry > Diller didn't try to claim ownership and let the various studios keep > ownership of the films. Great for them, bad for any chance of Disney/ > ABC doing an MOW channel. In my mind, the most likely source for an > all made-for-TV movie channel would be NBC, since Universal started > first (back with "Fame is the Name of the Game" in 1965, the pilot for > the series) and has the most titles. It's just that Disney owns the > most memorable made-for-TV-movie series theme music and titles > sequence (with only Morton Stevens' CBS movie theme of the 60s and 70s > as a second). > The Encore channels do run some of the old MOW, but from my experience (and it is not systematic or exhaustive) not that many. I believe Encore programming is on instant view from Netflix, so I guess I can take a random sample of 20 or so titles from the MOW list and see how many are available on netflix as a rough guide - I might try that this weekend. I do recall that when I first got DirecTV about 15 years ago or so the Name of the Game was being shown on the Encore Mystery channel, but I have not seen it there for a long time - and neither "Name of the Game" nor "Fame is the Name of the Game" delivers any hits on Netflix. Nor do I see any hits on Netflix for "The Bold Ones", which I don't recall ever seeing on Encore. Netflix does have most of Columbo (with unexplained missing episodes from most seasons), on instant view no less. They also have Mac & Wife and at least some seasons of McCloud (Mac used to be on instant view but recently was changed to disk only). I see they now have the first season of Banacek, which I always liked, but on disk only. I do recall the CBS movies, but don't recall them as being particularly good - are there any iconic titles from that series? -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
