Word: telecast
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...them about missions to rescue American POWs in Viet Nam, drew big audiences. On TV, Viet Nam veterans, once portrayed as troubled loners, are now the sympathetic crime fighters of such hit shows as The A-Team and Magnum, P.I. First Blood scored unusually high ratings in a telecast on NBC last month, and orders for video cassettes of the film have jumped 25% since the release of Rambo...
...their breath from another extended TV voyage, NBC's twelve-hour tour of the early years of Christianity, A.D. Indeed, there has hardly been a respite all season from the parade of miniseries. Seven multipart dramas of three nights or more (as well as several two-parters) have been telecast since September; an eighth, CBS's Christopher Columbus, is coming...
...average 38.6 rating over its seven nights. A month later, The Thorn Birds, also on ABC, surpassed that score with a whopping 41.9. Enticed by these colossal numbers, all three networks began developing mini-series at a rate unseen since the heady days following the ground-breaking 1977 telecast of Roots (at 45.0, still the all-time ratings champ). Such "long form" dramas, however, need out-of-the-ordinary ratings to justify their hefty production costs (a reported $32 million for Space, for example), especially since most of them do poorly in reruns. And as the minis proliferate, maxi- audiences...
Such assessments, aside from being self-serving, ignored the network's serious contributions. In January 1977, ABC telecast Roots, a twelve-hour multigenerational saga about American slaves that ran for eight consecutive nights. The scheduling tactic was unprecedented, the results staggering. Roots drew the largest audience of any entertainment program in history and helped make the mini-series form a prime-time staple. Since then, ABC has produced its share of ambitious dramatic fare, from the 18-hour The Winds of War to The Day After, the controversial film about the impact of nuclear war on a small town...
...mark with some notable program events. Last fall it offered the U.S. premiere of John Schlesinger's An Englishman Abroad, an affectionately wrought drama based on Actress Coral Browne's chance encounter with Soviet Spy Guy Burgess (played with world-weary charm by Alan Bates). In January A&E telecast the first modern public performance of Mozart's "lost" Symphony in A Minor, with Tom Hulce (an Oscar nominee for Amadeus) serving as an agreeable host...