Life Before Cable - The ABC Sunday Night Movie

In case you didn't know, the year is 2008. And if I just did my count right, I have forty-two premium movie channels on my cable system. Yes, I pay for every single one they offer. Why? Because 1) I'm single and I don't have kids, so I can spend my money however I damn well please without guilt, and 2) if I were to, for some reason, choose not to get just ONE of those movie channels, I guarantee you that that's the one that will be showing "Breaking Away" at exactly the time when I'm in the mood to watch "Breaking Away". I've got more movie channels than I know what to do with. Good movies, bad movies, new movies, old movies. Cinema overkill. One of the great joys of living in the twenty-first century.

However, when I was growing up, there was no "cable" available. Maybe there was in some parts of the country, but not if you lived in Northern Cal. And even it was around, the vast majority of Americans were still slaves to network television. So when a big movie hit the theaters, you knew you really had to get out to see it. Because if you missed it, there was no "I'll just rent it in six months". There WAS no rental. And there was no "It'll be on cable soon". Again...NO CABLE. All you could do if you missed out on the big blockbuster that everyone was talking about was to sit on your ass for one to three years and wait for it to show up on network television...chopped, censored, overdubbed to spare you from the verbal violence of profanity (when NBC showed the Burt Reynolds film "The End", Burt's lips said something quite different, but his voice from the TV said "Gosh darn son of a buck!"), and jammed full of commercials for Pepsi ("Catch that Pepsi Spirit! Drink it in, drink it in, drink it in...") and Eveready Batteries ("I dare you to knock this battery off my shoulder"). But we all know what beggars CAN'T be, so when we had a chance to see a big-name film that was long-gone from the neighborhood theater, we treated it like the event that the networks told us it was. And there was no bigger venue for such events than the ABC Sunday Night Movie.

Let me share with you a little flavor of what those nights were like with a couple of video clips from the glorious year of 1979. I won't spoil it for you by revealing what the big blockbuster film is, but if you click HERE, you can watch the promo leading up to the big event. And don't worry...as the ad will tell you, it comes on at a "special time", but it does come on AFTER "Mork", so you won't have to miss that. Please join with me in digging the awesome seventies ABC neon logo.

And then, get your heart pumping in anticipation as you click HERE and watch the ABC Sunday Night Movie lead-in intro to the film. How can you NOT watch it? Just listen to the ad...it's "the biggest adventure EVER"! And and it's about to start "for the first time on television". I'm getting chills all over again! Make some Jiffy Pop. Pour yourself a Dr. Pepper (or, if you've put the kids to bed, maybe some Riunite on ice (Riunite so nice). And settle in for (what actually is) one of the greatest motion pictures ever made, and proof that a couple of good things did come out of the seventies. ABBA was not one of them, but this movie was.

Sorry that I don't have the actual film for you to watch. If you're really in the mood to see it now, you can always find it on cable. Or see if it's on On Demand. Or pull it from your DVD library. Or go get it from Blockbuster. Or order it from Netflix. Or download the Torrent and watch it on your PC. Or get it off iTunes and watch it on your iPod.

Yes, times do change.

But Robert Conrad can STILL kick your ass if you mess with his battery.

SPECIAL BONUS CLIPS!

Sunday Night Movie Intro - 1976 - (Hey HEY hey!)
Sunday Night Movie Intro - 1979 - (Okay, they weren't ALL blockbusters...)
Sunday Night Movie Intro - 1982 - (Let it go all the way to the end for an awesome promo!)
Sunday Night Movie Intro - 1984 - (Bond love, baby!).