There was a time when watching a movie on the television was a big deal. During the 1950's and early 1960's there were only the three network stations available to watch in Philadelphia while I was growing up. A VHF station appeared in the mid 1960's. This was the landscape of watching television at the that time and movies were not a big part of that television era.
Movies were special. For example something like The Wizard of Oz was an annual ritual each year on a Sunday evening in the spring. We got our first color TV when I was in high school and it was exciting to watch the Wizard of Oz suddenly become in color just like it was planned when Dorothy lands in Oz.
Movies at prime time were very rare. The Wizard of Oz was an exception. Usually you need to wait until after the news and then after the talk shows like Johnny Carson before any movie would be shown. Then when the UHF station appeared they used movies to fill in some of their time slots later at night. People would switch to the UHF stations especially in the late 60's when more of them appeared in Philly like channel 17, 29 and 48. Suddenly movies were available. Of course these were old movies from the studio film archives and mostly black and white.
An early pioneer of color movies on TV was NBC Saturday Night at the Movies which showed relatively recent films from major studios. This show was a success. I remember being excited to watch movies on a Saturday night if I wasn't going anywhere. Soon the other networks started having movies nights throughout the week during prime time and more and more movies were available to watch on TV.
Of course then later came cable TV, video cassette movies and then streaming. It's hard to believe that at one time being able to watch a movie on TV was a treat.
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