Wide World of Entertainment

ABC's Wide World of Entertainment
Genre	Variety
Country of origin	United States
Original language(s)	English
Production
Producer(s)	20th Television 20th Century Fox Television 20th Century Fox Television(Fox Television Studios)
Camera setup	89
Running time	90 minutes
Release
Original network	American Broadcasting Company
Original release	January 8, 1973 – January 10, 1976

ABC's Wide World of Entertainment is a late night block of programs created by the American Broadcasting Company. It premiered on January 8, 1973, and ended three years later.

Unable to find a single talk show to compete with NBC's highly successful Tonight Show, the network aired a collection of comedy specials, documentaries, mystery movies, music concerts and talk shows with a variety of hosts. Included in the broadcasts were The Dick Cavett Show, Jack Paar Tonite, Good Night America (a newsmagazine hosted by Geraldo Rivera), the live concert series In Concert, the UK-originated anthology series Thriller, and Comedy News (a parody of local TV newscasts with an ensemble cast of comedians and satirists including Kenneth Mars, Marian Mercer, Robert Klein, Mort Sahl and Dick Gregory). Initially, Paar, Cavett, comedy specials and mystery movies were each given one week per month. Two nights of music concerts, broadcast every other Friday on weeks where specials or movies were broadcast, completed the monthly schedule.

Monty Python's Flying Circus, the British comedy sketch television series, taped its last episode in December 1974 and was syndicated to American public television stations soon after. On October 3, 1975, ABC aired the first of two edited compilations of sketches from the series as one of its Wide World of Entertainment comedy specials. The Python group represented by Terry Gilliam, the group's only American-born member, sued ABC for copyright infringement.

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