The made-for-TV-movie format flourished in the following decades, and by 1996, 264 made-for-TV-movies were made by America's six largest TV networks that year.īelow are brief synopses of 200 of some of the most memorable made-for-TV-movies of the 1970s, followed by a searchable database of 1,100 additional made-for-TV-movies from the 1970s, late 1960s and early 1980s. Many early made-for-TV-movies features major stars and were usually broadcast as a weekly anthology TV series, such as ABC's Movie of the Week. As the networks began showing major theatrical releases in prime time, beginning with NBC's Saturday Night at the Movies in 1961, a shortage of movie studio product led to the production of made-for-TV movies, the first of which is generally acknowledged to be See How They Run in 1964. Eginning in the early 1960s, television networks began showing what were called 'made-for-TV-movies' to encourage audiences to stay at home and watch what they promoted as the equivalent of a first-run theatrical film.
