Made-for-TV film

A television film (also known as a television movie, telefilm, telemovie, made-for-television film, direct-to-TV film, movie of the week, feature-length drama, single drama or 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.

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, 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 (relatively inexpensive) 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.

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