Made-for-Television Movies: History, Production, and Impact

Introduction to the Made-for-Television Movie

This essay discusses made-for-television movies and the impact they have had — or not had — on the cinema and home-viewing market. The role of the producer will be examined, and the differences between theatrical-release producing and television producing will be explored. The success of the telemovie on pay-TV as opposed to free-to-air broadcast will also be considered.

Origins and Landmark Productions

The made-for-television movie got its start in the United States in the early 1960s, when television networks and their biggest clients — advertisers — were attempting to lure the cinema crowd back home. The explosion of cinema in America in the 1950s meant that much advertising revenue was being lost to the theatres, and television producers needed a way to draw the population "back to the box." It is generally acknowledged that the first such movie to be aired was See How They Run, which screened on American network NBC in October of 1964 (Hilmes 2004). Early telemovies featured well-known actors, and many were accorded a higher budget than most dramatic series airing at the time; some even garnered more funds than theatrical releases. Initial runtimes were around the 90-minute mark, including commercials, although this later expanded to a two-hour benchmark more in line with the average cinematic release.

The most-watched telemovie in history was the 1983 ABC production The Day After, which depicted a nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union (Abramson 2003). Capitalizing on widespread anti-Soviet sentiment in the United States at the time, it screened to an estimated audience of 100 million people. To put that figure in perspective: if 100 million people paid to see a current-release film, the box-office takings would be roughly 900 million dollars — only 100 million short of the worldwide gross of Titanic, the all-time box-office champion at the time of writing.

Other telemovies have spawned television series as an off-shoot. In 2003, the Sci-Fi Channel aired a four-hour telemovie based on the 1970s television show Battlestar Galactica. The telemovie was so successful that network executives greenlighted a series, which went on to run for four seasons.

The Telemovie Producer vs. the Theatrical Producer

Initially, telemovies promised viewers all the excitement of a big-screen release in the comfort of their living rooms. As the genre evolved through the decades, however, the telemovie rarely duplicated that feat. Increasingly, made-for-television movies became the "red-headed stepchild" of the television industry — marked by low budgets, lesser-known actors, poor production values, and plots ripped straight from tabloid headlines. Such films became pop-culture references in their own right; many television series and films have featured characters making derisive remarks about "movies of the week," usually in reference to situations filled with melodrama. An exception is the American premium cable channel HBO, which consistently produces telemovies and miniseries featuring well-known actors and scripts by award-winning writers, and has won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Made-for-Television Movie almost every year since 1993.

Producers of telemovies face different challenges from theatrical producers, though some may claim that their role is fundamentally easier. Since the collapse of the studio system in the United States in the early twentieth century, film producers — who once maintained complete creative and financial control over a project — have been somewhat relegated to being the "money people." There are hands-on creative producers, of course, and many television producers have become as well-known as film directors, commanding equally loyal followings. J.J. Abrams of Lost, Alias, and Felicity fame, and Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly, are two prominent examples.

The core differences between the roles of a telemovie producer and a theatrical-release producer come down to money, time, talent, and audience. A film producer's role is to find funding from various sources — some theatrical films will have as many as fifty companies and hundreds of investors, all pursued and solicited by the producer. Funding a feature film, especially one not backed by a major studio (as is the case for nearly every Australian feature film ever made), is an ongoing process that may span years. Funds must be sought and secured across every stage: finding and establishing the script, reworking the script, auditions, casting, rehearsals, equipment hire, crew, catering, location permits, telecine, post-production, special effects, reshoots, dailies screenings, and — most expensive of all, sometimes exceeding production costs — advertising and distribution.

A telemovie producer, by contrast, is hired by a network — often from in-house, such as a director of one of the network's regular dramas — and the network is in most cases the sole source of funding. HBO has been known to outsource some funding and produce joint ventures with independent film companies, though this approach is rare. A two-hour feature film may spend years in development and production; a two-hour telemovie greenlighted in March can be on the air by May or June. The telemovie producer is responsible for bringing the entire process into a cohesive whole — overseeing casting, hiring crew, managing publicity, and developing advertising strategies. In most cases, however, they have the full weight and support of a network behind them, with access to studios, equipment, post-production offices, special effects departments, wardrobe, makeup, and catering — all in-house and all covered in the initial budget. The project is typically shot on inexpensive video, the distributor is built in, and advertising costs are shouldered by the network. This lifts an immense burden from the telemovie producer's shoulders.