In the 1960s,
movie studios viewed television as a second-rate medium but also as a threat to their theatrical revenue, so they charged high fees for the privilege to broadcast their films. The networks experimented with having films made specifically for TV to lower expenses. NBC created the first weekly umbrella for such films with their
World Premiere Movie in 1966, running in a two-hour time slot. Until the late 1960s, ABC ran a distant third behind rivals
CBS and
NBC, leading to jokes about it coming in fourth among the three networks or about its acronym meaning "Almost Broadcasting Company". Desperation and a looser corporate structure allowed ABC to consider plans that the other two networks would not.
Barry Diller, then a junior executive at ABC and later a co-founder of the
Fox network, is often cited as the creator of the
Movie of the Week (MotW), although the concept was actually originated by producer
Roy Huggins. Huggins reasoned that many older theatrical films ran shorter than 90 minutes so requiring a 120-minute time slot was unnecessary. His proposal was rejected by NBC and CBS but became the subject of a cover story in the March 21, 1968 issue of
Variety magazine. ABC executives read the article and contacted Huggins, who did not want to sell the idea but could produce the series through
Universal, where he was under contract. Universal demanded a larger budget than ABC wanted to spend, as well as the exclusive right to produce all future TV movies for ABC, conditions that pushed ABC to control production on their own, purchasing films from various studios and production companies. ABC consoled Huggins by allowing him to produce several films, including
The Young Country, precursor to
Alias Smith and Jones. Michael Karol repeated the claim in his book
The ABC Movie of the Week Companion: A Loving Tribute to the Classic Series that the Movie of the Week was Diller's idea, but this was based on hearsay. '' (1975) The shorter format allowed a smaller budget than two-hour TV movies. At $350,000 per film, it was less than half the budget of NBC's
World Premiere movies. It featured the work of producers like
Aaron Spelling,
David Wolper and
Harve Bennett (all of whom later developed hit series of their own), and was produced by different production companies such as
Bing Crosby Productions and the network's own
ABC Circle Films. Spelling was particularly prolific, producing films under his own credit as well as through
Spelling-Goldberg Productions and Thomas-Spelling Productions (partly owned by
Danny Thomas). The
MotW provided ABC with a ratings hit and, along with
Monday Night Football, helped establish the network as a legitimate competitor to rivals
CBS and
NBC. The films themselves varied in quality and were often escapist or sensationalistic in nature (
suspense,
horror and
melodrama were staples), but some were critically well received. For example,
Duel (1971), based on a
Richard Matheson short story from
Playboy, was director
Steven Spielberg's first feature film, catapulting his career and enabling him to move from television to theatrical films. ABC earned four
Emmys, a
Peabody Award and citations from the
NAACP and
American Cancer Society for an airing of ''
Brian's Song'' in 1972. The 1971–72 season of the series finished as the fifth highest rated series of the year. The series was documented by Michael Karol in his 2005 book,
The ABC Movie of the Week Companion: A Loving Tribute to the Classic Series, which was updated in 2008 (), and by Michael McKenna in
The ABC Movie of the Week: Big Movies for the Small Screen. ==Time slots==