CBS to bring back Sunday night movies during pandemic
Good 'ol fashioned movies are making a TV comeback in the US, as families self-isolate.
- Published by David Knox
- on
- Filed under Coronavirus, News
Many moons ago Channel 10 was the first in Australia to dump Sunday night movies from their schedule (from memory it was in favour of NCIS).
It was a radical move everyone eventually followed.
Now their parent company CBS is set to reintroduce good old-fashioned flicks to Sunday nights during the coronavirus pandemic, as families self-isolate. And it is even bumping Love Island to make room.
“It’s a five-week programming event with epic films, iconic stars and brilliant stories that viewers love…and love to watch together,” said Noriko Kelley, EVP, Program Planning and Scheduling, CBS Entertainment.
NBCUniversal has also announced that it was ushering in (semi) commercial-free family movie nights on USA, Syfy and Telemundo. Syfy just scheduled family classic The Goonies to air on Easter Sunday night.
In Australia multichannels have drawn upon movies in primetime, more frequently than primary channels, with 9GEM currently screening a month of James Bond films.
May 3
“Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark”
May 10
“Forrest Gump”
May 17
“Mission: Impossible”
May 24
“Titanic”
May 31
“Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”
Source: Deadline
28 Responses
Can networks broadcast any movies they wish or do they have rights to certain companies films?
They have rights with distributors who represent certain studios. It usually entails a period / number of screenings.
Definitely Law & Order replaced the Sunday movies.
It was both.
Both Nine and Seven simply rotate The same movies from channel to channel. Back to the Future I one example. They air it over the list of channels then SBS or another.network picks it up. With the numbers of movies made surely there must be others that can be aired.
I’m quite happy with Channel 9’s movie scheduling practice on weekend afternoons and on holiday periods as well (especially now that there’s no sport to air) They do pick out a lot of great family-friendly films from the 80s, 90s and 00s to put on not just Channel 9 but 9Go as well. With that said, I am looking forward to spending my Easter Monday afternoon watching Pretty In Pink on Ch9. Can’t wait to relive that film!
A lot of Australian old shows are on Amazon Prime
Hmmm. Would stick to streaming with ad free movies.
I would love to see a channel called Seven Gold or Nine Retro, where to turn it on, and it the magic days of the station filled with all the retro programs many have mentioned above are on. The old idents in-between shows with the loud station brands front and centre and the old Sunday Movie beaming through.
That’s called YouTube…
Yeah, true… But would be good to have it on one channel where we didn’t have to go searching for it.
Plus some is not on YouTube due to copyright.
Years ago I remember we used to get Saturday and Sunday afternoon old Black and White movies on all the networks which were always great to watch. There were films like the Andy Hardy series with Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, Shirley Temple films, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis etc films. All the old classics. Ivan Hutchinson and Bill Collins used to introduce them. I reckon they should go back to playing them now, either during the day or late at night. Much better than all those advertorials they show now.
David, Channel 10 actually replaced movies with Law and Order: Criminal Intent and it was instantly successful.
I sit corrected.
Sitting is the new smoking DK, please stand and move about
Actually I have it on good authority:
8:30: L&O Criminal Intent
9:30 NCIS.
I’m standing up again.
Did Rove Live come after that ?
Yes that I think that’s correct. Looks like we’re both right. 🙂
Funny, as I was reading David’s story, I was thinking that it was Criminal Intent.
This is actually pretty cool. Hopefully its not ads every 5 minutes.
Decent collection of movies. Reckon if you asked most people for a Top 10 family movie list, these five would be on most of them.
And yet every one of them will be badly edited to meet puritanical American broadcast standards.
Only ‘Titanic’ would be censored for US FTA of the list above, but it is a factor for many Hollywood films-used to be done here to varying degrees and occasionally still is, even by .
In a perfect world I would love to see the networks bring back the great mini series such as All the rivers run, Dirt water dynasty and Bangkok Hilton just to name a few all being re mastered. Been so long since they’ve been on TV.
WIN-Crawford have All The Rivers Run and a few others. Hopefully they will make it to Sat. night.
You can get all the Crawford shows on dvd. They often advertise them on WIN TV. Sullivans , Flying Doctors etc.
Don’t forget Return To Eden (as if you could ?)
I think that Return to Eden is on Amazon Prime as is Blue Heelers and Water Rats and Recue Special Ops
For goodness sake CBS! Why can’t you air The Amazing Race 32 on Sunday nights, instead of these movies? You would get good ratings, which means that TAR33 & TAR34 can be produced when this coronavirus ‘dies’ (whenever this is!)