THE WINNERS ARE...
Winners of the Readers' Choice and Editors' Choice 2007 IVy Awards have been announced! Come see the winners. Thanks to everyone who voted.

From The TV IV

Launched in 1969, the ABC Movie of the Week banner ran for six seasons through 1975, during which time it proved immensely popular and spawned the movie of the week craze which would persist until 2006, when CBS ended the last time slot set aside for TV movies in American network primetime. Billed at the time as "the most costly series in network history," the ABC Movie of the Week was hardly a series in the same sense of its anthology series predecessors. Nonetheless, over its six-year run, it would inspire numerous imitators, win dozens of awards, launch or give a boost to the careers of some of the biggest names in film and television in the 1970s—Steven Spielberg (Duel), James Caan (Brian's Song), Jeff Bridges (In Search of America) Burt Reynolds (Run Simon, Run) and others—and result in several TV shows.

What distinguished the ABC Movie of the Week from its predecessors were two things, which were spelled out by ABC vice president and the mastermind behind the Movie of the Week, Barry Diller. "First, the 90-minute form provides us with the opportunity to do justice to that special echelon of story ideas, which don't quite work in the standard one- and two-hour television program forms. Second, unlike previous movies-for-television packages, Movie of the Week is drawing its films from several production companies. And coupling the individual movie to the company best equipped to produce it." One of those production companies would be Spelling/Thomas Productions, the partnership between television legends Aaron Spelling and Danny Thomas. Although Spelling had been working in television for over a decade by the time of the ABC Movie of the Week, his numerous successes (amongst more than a few flops) there would play a central role in his rise to power in the television industry throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s. In fact, three of the hit 1970s TV series which established him as one of the most powerful men in Hollywood—Starsky and Hutch, Fantasy Island and The Love Boat—premiered as movies of the week on ABC, although only Starsky and Hutch debuted under the ABC Movie of the Week banner.

That was due to another difference between the ABC Movie of the Week and its predecessors—one which Diller skillfully avoided mentioning in his press release touting the series as "the most costly" ever made. The ABC Movie of the Week gave the network a chance to test out new pilots for which it had already paid. Many of the pilots filmed never air, and the networks just lose that money. By airing some of those pilots as a Movie of the Week, ABC could both test their appeal on television audiences and recoup some of its money in sponsorship. Several of those pilots became series, and at least four of those series—The Six Million Dollar Man, Kung Fu, Kolchak: The Night Stalker and the afore-mentioned Starsky and Hutch—are today considered classics in their own right. The ABC Movie of the Week would also see the live-action debut of Wonder Woman on television, albeit in a form vastly different from the one she would have when portrayed by Lynda Carter in the later (non-ABC Movie of the Week) ABC movie The New Original Wonder Woman and subsequent series.

The ABC Movie of the Week, however, had a far greater impact on ABC than just boosting its ratings, bringing in ad revenue, giving it new talent and recouping some of its pilot expenditures. It also breathed new life into a network which had, in one sense, struggled since the dawn of television. Since the days when radio shows first started to gain pictures, rival CBS had planted its flag on the sitcom and variety show genres with such pioneering classics as I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners and The Ed Sullivan Show. By the end of the 1950s, NBC was dominating the various drama subgenres with such series as Dragnet, Bonanza and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. To be sure, all three networks had their successes in the 1950s and 60s in all genres, but the "alphabet network" had never dominated one type of programming as thoroughly as its competitors. As a result, it would lack a network "identity" or brand recognition—a problem which would plague it once again, three decades later, in the early 21st century after the decline of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and before the arrival of its dramas Lost, Grey's Anatomy and Desperate Housewives.

In the 1970s, however, ABC became the "movie network." By 1975, when the ABC Movie of the Week logo (itself noteworthy, in that it was an early use of "slit-scan" technology, still used today in IMAX special effects and famously used in the ending sequence of the classic film 2001: A Space Odyssey) aired for the last time before a movie debut, ABC was airing a movie (either original or theatrical) almost every night of the week, and on those nights when it aired more traditional series, NBC and CBS took up the slack with their own imitations. Despite the other networks' success, ABC would continue throughout the decade to be the leading network for original, dramatic, non-series programming even as it branched out into miniseries. Many of the classic miniseries of the format's American high water mark of the late 1970s and early 1980s were ABC productions, including Rich Man, Poor Man, QB VII, and, of course, the 1977 smash Roots—the most successful English-language American miniseries of all time.

Below is a list of made-for-TV movies created for ABC under the various banners—including The ABC Movie of the Weekend, The ABC Suspense Movie, Tuesday Movie of the Week and Wednesday Movie of the Week. It also includes those productions made for ABC and aired as part of The ABC Sunday Movie and Monday Night Movie banners, although both of those sometimes also aired theatrical films. For pilots which were picked up, the films listed below link to the pilot listings on the respective series pages.

[edit] Movies

#	Title	Airdate
1	Seven in Darkness	September 23, 1969
2	The Immortal¹	September 30, 1969
3	The Over-the-Hill Gang	October 7, 1969
4	Wake Me When the War Is Over	October 14, 1969
5	The Monk	October 21, 1969
6	The Young Lawyers¹	October 28, 1969
7	The Pigeon	November 4, 1969
8	Spy Killer	November 11, 1969
9	The Ballad of Andy Crocker	November 18, 1969
10	In Name Only	November 25, 1969
11	Three's a Crowd	December 2, 1969
12	Daughter of the Mind	December 9, 1969
13	The Silent Gun	December 16, 1969
14	Honeymoon with a Stranger	December 23, 1969
15	Gidget Grows Up	December 30, 1969
16	Black Water Gold	January 6, 1970
17	Foreign Exchange	January 13, 1970
18	Carter's Army	January 27, 1970
19	Along Came a Spider	February 3, 1970
20	The Challenge	February 10, 1970
21	Quarantined	February 24, 1970
22	Mister Jerico	March 3, 1970
23	The Love War	March 10, 1970
24	The Young Country	March 17, 1970
25	How Awful About Allan	September 22, 1970
26	Night Slaves	September 29, 1970
27	But I Don't Want to Get Married	October 6, 1970
28	The Old Man Who Cried Wolf	October 13, 1970
29	Wild Women	October 20, 1970
30	The House That Would Not Die	October 27, 1970
31	Tribes	November 10, 1970
32	The Over-the-Hill Gang Rides Again	November 17, 1970
33	Crowhaven Farm	November 24, 1970
34	Run Simon, Run	December 1, 1970
35	Weekend of Terror	December 8, 1970
36	The Man Who Wanted to Live Forever	December 15, 1970
37	Alias Smith and Jones¹	January 5, 1971
38	Assault on the Wayne	January 12, 1971
39	Dr. Cook's Garden	January 19, 1971
40	The Feminist and the Fuzz	January 26, 1971
41	The Point	February 2, 1971
42	Love, Hate, Love	February 9, 1971
43	Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring	February 16, 1971
44	Longstreet¹	February 23, 1971
45	Yuma	March 2, 1971
46	River of Gold	March 9, 1971
47	In Search of America	March 23, 1971
48	Sheriff	March 30, 1971
49	Escape	April 6, 1971
50	The Forgotten Man	September 14, 1971
51	The Birdmen	September 18, 1971
52	Congratulations, It's a Boy	September 21, 1971
53	Five Desperate Women	September 28, 1971
54	Sweet, Sweet Rachel³	October 2, 1971
55	The Last Child	October 5, 1971
56	Thief	October 9, 1971
57	A Taste of Evil	October 12, 1971
58	In Broad Daylight	October 16, 1971
59	Suddenly Single	October 19, 1971
60	Death Takes a Holiday	October 23, 1971
61	The Death of Me Yet	October 27, 1971
62	A Little Game	October 30, 1971
63	Two on a Bench	November 2, 1971
64	Revenge!	November 6, 1971
65	Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate	November 9, 1971
66	Duel	November 13, 1971
67	Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones	November 16, 1971
68	The Reluctant Heroes	November 23, 1971
69	The Failing of Raymond	November 27, 1971
70	Brian's Song	November 30, 1971
71	The Devil and Miss Sarah	December 4, 1971
72	If Tomorrow Comes	December 7, 1971
73	See the Man Run	December 11, 1971
74	The Trackers	December 14, 1971
75	What's a Nice Girl Like You...?	December 18, 1971
76	Gidget Gets Married	January 4, 1972
77	The Astronaut	January 8, 1972
78	The Night Stalker¹	January 11, 1972
79	Madame Sin	January 15, 1972
80	Getting Away from It All	January 18, 1972
81	The People	January 22, 1972
82	Women in Chains	January 25, 1972
83	The Screaming Woman	January 29, 1972
84	Hardcase	February 1, 1972
85	When Michael Calls	February 5, 1972
86	Second Chance	February 8, 1972
87	Hound of the Baskervilles	February 9, 1972
88	Call Her Mom	February 15, 1972
89	Kung Fu¹	February 22, 1972
90	Two for the Money	February 26, 1972
91	The Eyes of Charles Sand	February 29, 1972
92	A Very Missing Person	March 4, 1972
93	The Rookies¹	March 7, 1972
94	The Longest Night	September 12, 1972
95	The Daughters of Joshua Cabe	September 13, 1972
96	No Place to Run	September 19, 1972
97	Haunts of the Very Rich	September 20, 1972
98	Moon of the Wolf	September 26, 1972
99	Say Goodbye, Maggie Cole	September 27, 1972
100	Playmates	October 3, 1972
101	Rolling Man	October 4, 1972
102	Night of Terror	October 10, 1972
103	Lt. Schuster's Wife	October 11, 1972
104	Goodnight, My Love	October 17, 1972
105	A Great American Tragedy	October 18, 1972
106	Short Walk to Daylight	October 24, 1972
107	Family Flight	October 25, 1972
108	The Bounty Man	October 31, 1972
109	That Certain Summer	November 1, 1972
110	The Crooked Hearts	November 8, 1972
111	The Victim	November 14, 1972
112	All My Darling Daughters	November 22, 1972
113	Home for the Holidays	November 28, 1972
114	The Heist	November 29, 1972
115	The Couple Takes a Wife	December 5, 1972
116	Pursuit	December 12, 1972
117	Every Man Needs One	December 13, 1972
118	Weekend Nun	December 20, 1972
119	Firehouse	January 2, 1973
120	The Devil's Daughter	January 9, 1973
121	Trouble Comes to Town	January 10, 1973
122	The Night Strangler²	January 16, 1973
123	Female Artillery	January 17, 1973
124	Go Ask Alice	January 24, 1973
125	A Cold Night's Death	January 30, 1973
126	Snatched	January 31, 1973
127	Divorce His	February 6, 1973
128	Divorce Hers	February 7, 1973
129	The Great American Beauty Contest	February 13, 1973
130	The Girls of Huntington House	February 14, 1973
131	A Brand New Life	February 20, 1973
132	And No One Could Save Her	February 21, 1973
133	The Connection	February 27, 1973
134	You'll Never See Me Again	February 28, 1973
135	The Letters	March 6, 1973
136	The Six Million Dollar Man¹	March 7, 1973
137	The Bait	March 13, 1973
138	Class of '63	March 14, 1973
139	Beg, Borrow or Steal	March 20, 1973
140	Toma¹	March 21, 1973
141	Deliver Us from Evil	September 11, 1973
142	She Lives!	September 12, 1973
143	Dying Room Only	September 18, 1973
144	Satan's School for Girls	September 19, 1973
145	Hijack	September 26, 1973
146	Runaway!	September 29, 1973
147	Isn't It Shocking?	October 2, 1973
148	Letters from Three Lovers	October 3, 1973
149	The Alpha Caper	October 6, 1973
150	Shirts/Skins	October 9, 1973
151	Don't Be Afraid of the Dark	October 10, 1973
152	Double Indemnity	October 13, 1973
153	Third Girl from the Left	October 16, 1973
154	The Man Who Could Talk to Kids	October 17, 1973
155	The Six Million Dollar Man: Wine, Women and War²	October 20, 1973
156	Money to Burn	October 27, 1973
157	Ordeal	October 30, 1973
158	Guess Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed?	October 31, 1973
159	Linda	November 3, 1973
160	The Girl Most Likely To...	November 6, 1973
161	My Darling Daughters' Anniversary	November 7, 1973
162	Death Race	November 10, 1973
163	Trapped	November 14, 1973
164	The Affair	November 15, 1973
165	The Six Million Dollar Man: Solid Gold Kidnapping²	November 17, 1973
166	Scream, Pretty Peggy	November 24, 1973
167	Outrage	November 28, 1973
168	A Summer Without Boys	December 4, 1973
169	Bloodsport	December 5, 1973
170	Maneater	December 8, 1973
171	The Cat Creature	December 11, 1973
172	Message to My Daughter	December 12, 1973
173	What Are Best Friends For?	December 18, 1973
174	Pioneer Woman	December 19, 1973
175	The Death Squad	January 8, 1974
176	Shootout in a One Dog Town	January 9, 1974
177	Mrs. Sundance	January 15, 1974
178	Scream of the Wolf	January 16, 1974
179	Skyway to Death	January 19, 1974
180	Get Christie Love!¹	January 22, 1974
181	Pray for the Wildcats	January 23, 1974
182	Heatwave	January 26, 1974
183	The Girl Who Came Gift-Wrapped	January 29, 1974
184	Killdozer	February 2, 1974
185	Can Ellen Be Saved?	February 4, 1974
186	Cry Panic!	February 6, 1974
187	The Elevator	February 9, 1974
188	I Love You... Goodbye	February 12, 1974
189	The Morning After	February 13, 1974
190	Live Again, Die Again	February 16, 1974
191	Hitchhike!	February 23, 1974
192	Killer Bees	February 26, 1974
193	Unwed Father	February 27, 1974
194	Houston, We've Got a Problem	March 2, 1974
195	The Stranger Who Looks Like Me	March 6, 1974
196	Wonder Woman³	March 12, 1974
197	The Hanged Man	March 13, 1974
198	The Gun and the Pulpit	April 3, 1974
199	Murder or Mercy	April 10, 1974
200	The Last Angry Man	April 16, 1974
201	Nakia¹	April 17, 1974
202	The Chadwick Family	April 17, 1974
203	Planet Earth	April 23, 1974
204	The Story of Pretty Boy Floyd	May 7, 1974
205	Hurricane	September 10, 1974
206	Savages	September 11, 1974
207	The Sex Symbol	September 17, 1974
208	The Day the Earth Moved	September 18, 1974
209	The Great Niagara	September 24, 1974
210	The California Kid	September 28, 1974
211	The Stranger Within	October 1, 1974
212	Death Sentence	October 2, 1974
213	Where Have All the People Gone?	October 8, 1974
214	Hit Lady	October 8, 1974
215	Locusts	October 9, 1974
216	Bad Ronald	October 23, 1974
217	The Mark of Zorro	October 29, 1974
218	Death Cruise	October 30, 1974
219	The Great Ice Rip-Off	November 6, 1974
220	All the Kind Strangers	November 12, 1974
221	The Gun	November 13, 1974
222	It Couldn't Happen to a Nicer Guy	November 19, 1974
223	Panic on the 5:22	November 20, 1974
224	The Godchild	November 26, 1974
225	Betrayal	December 3, 1974
226	Only with Married Men	December 4, 1974
227	Roll, Freddy, Roll	December 17, 1974
228	Let's Switch!	January 7, 1975
229	The Missing Are Deadly	January 8, 1975
230	Satan's Triangle	January 14, 1975
231	The Hatfields and the McCoys	January 15, 1975
232	The Abduction of Saint Anne	January 21, 1975
233	The Daughters of Joshua Cabe Return	January 28, 1975
234	The Trial of Chaplain Jensen	February 11, 1975
235	A Cry for Help	February 12, 1975
236	The Family Nobody Wanted	February 19, 1975
237	You Lie So Deep	February 25, 1975
238	Someone I Touched	February 26, 1975
239	Trilogy of Terror	March 4, 1975
240	The Desperate Miles	March 5, 1975
241	Huckleberry Finn	March 25, 1975
242	Dead Man on the Run	April 2, 1975
243	Returning Home	April 29, 1975
244	Starsky and Hutch¹	April 30, 1975
245	Matt Helm¹	May 7, 1975
246	The First 36 Hours of Dr. Durant	May 13, 1975
247	Promise Him Anything	May 14, 1975
¹Pilots for series which were picked up (not under the ABC Movie of the Week banner in the Wiki) ²Sequels to pilots for series which were picked up (not under the ABC Movie of the Week banner) ³Pilots for series which were picked up but significantly re-conceived & recast (under the ABC Movie of the Week banner)

[edit] Series Launched

Several series were picked up as the result of pilots which aired as part of the ABC Movie of the Week. Below is a list of those series.

Title	Series Debut
The Young Lawyers	September 21, 1970
The Immortal	September 24, 1970
Alias Smith and Jones	January 21, 1971
Longstreet¹	September 16, 1971
The Sixth Sense²	January 15, 1972
The Rookies	September 11, 1972
Kung Fu	October 14, 1972
Toma	October 4, 1973
The Six Million Dollar Man	January 18, 1974
Get Christie Love	September 11, 1974
Kolchak: The Night Stalker	September 13, 1974
Nakia	September 21, 1974
Starsky and Hutch	September 10, 1975
Matt Helm	September 20, 1975
Wonder Woman²	April 21, 1976
¹Series picked up by CBS ²Series re-conceived and recast from ABC Movie of the Week pilot