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A television film (also known as a TV film; television movie; TV movie; telefilm; telemovie; made-for-television film; direct-to-TV film; movie of the week (MOTW or MOW); feature-length drama; single drama and original movie) is a feature-length motion picture that is produced for, and originally distributed by or to, a television network, in contrast to theatrical films, which are made explicitly for initial showing in movie theaters. ==Origins and history== Though not exactly labelled as such, there were early precedents for "television movies", such as ''Talk Faster, Mister'', which aired on WABD (now WNYW) in New York City on December 18, 1944, and was produced by RKO Pictures,〔(Television and Hollywood in the 1940s )〕 or the 1957 ''The Pied Piper of Hamelin'', based on the poem by Robert Browning, and starring Van Johnson, one of the first filmed "family musicals" made directly for television. That film was made in Technicolor, a first for television, which ordinarily used color processes originated by specific networks (most "family musicals" of the time, such as ''Peter Pan'', were not filmed but broadcast live and preserved on kinescope, a recording of a television program made by filming the picture from a video monitor – and the only method of recording a television program until the invention of videotape). Television films had a rough start when the idea was first presented in the 1950s to major networks. The production for the films was an unstable business with certain challenges facing early participants. Many television networks were hostile toward film programming, fearing that it would loosen the network's arrangements with sponsors and affiliates by encouraging station managers to make independent deals with advertisers and film producers.〔''Fifties Television: The Industry and Its Critics'', William Boddy, University of Illinois Press, 1992, ISBN 978-0-252-06299-5〕 By contrast, beginning in the 1950s episodes of American television series would be placed together and released as feature films in overseas cinemas. Television networks were in control of the most valuable prime time slots available for programming, so syndicators of independent television films had to settle for fewer television markets and less desirable time periods. This meant much smaller advertising revenues and license fees compared with network-supplied programming.〔 The term "made-for-TV movie" was coined in the United States in the early 1960s as an incentive for movie audiences to stay home and watch what was promoted as the equivalent of a first-run theatrical film. Beginning in 1961 with ''NBC Saturday Night at the Movies'', a prime time network showing of a television premiere of a major theatrical film release, the other networks soon copied the format, with each of the networks having several ''(of the Week ) Night At The Movies'' showcases which led to a shortage of movie studio product. The first of these made-for-TV movies is generally acknowledged to be ''See How They Run'', which debuted on NBC on October 7, 1964.〔Michael McKenna. (August 22, 2013). Page xviii. (The ABC Movie of the Week: Big Movies for the Small Screen ). Scarecrow Press. Accessed on December 31, 2013.〕 A previous film, ''The Killers'', starring Lee Marvin and Ronald Reagan, was filmed as a TV-movie, although NBC decided it was too violent for television and it was released theatrically instead.〔(Combustible Celluloid.com, "Hemingway-esque", review by Jeffrey M. Anderson, paragraph 3 )〕 The second film to be considered a television movie, Don Siegel's ''The Hanged Man'', was broadcast by NBC on November 18, 1964.〔 These features originally filled a 90-minute programming time slot (including commercials), later expanded to two hours, and were usually broadcast as a weekly anthology television series (for example, the ''ABC Movie of the Week''). Many early television movies featured major stars, and some were accorded higher budgets than standard television series of the same length, including the major dramatic anthology programs which they came to replace. In 1996, 264 made-for-TV movies were made by the five largest American television networks at the time (CBS, NBC, Fox, ABC, and the WB), averaging a 7.5 rating.〔Deggans, Eric. "Has death knell sounded for made-for-TV movies?." Daily Breeze (Torrance, CA) 30 May, 2001, ENTERTAINMENT: C7. NewsBank. Web. 8 Jul. 2015.〕 By 2000, however, 146 TV movies were made by those five networks, averaging a 5.4 rating.〔 On the other hand, the number of made-for-cable movies made annually in the U.S. doubled between 1990 and 2000.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Television film」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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