TV Movies: Cheap Low Quality

There is a joy to seeing a movie in a theater and enjoying one if the quality is there. Unfortunately, not every movie gets put on a screen at your local mall or small theater. Direct-to-video is one option for some and others might find one on TV that you will only find on the small screen. The television movie is one of the bigger money makers for some companies, but it's also one that merits low quality.

Is every television movie bad? No. One of the biggest examples of quality was the 1971 movie Brian's Song. It was the story of Brian Piccolo and the friendship he had with Gale Sayers. They were both running backs for the Chicago Bears and formed a bond that ended when Piccolo passed away from cancer. The film was part of ABC's Movie of the Week program, which showed films made for that network every week from the late 60s up until the mid 70s. For the effort, it won awards, which says a lot.

So why do we have to sift through a lot of crap? That was the thing that canned ABC's program, even though television movies started long before they started running weekly ones. It's like anything. People want to see something top notch or exceptionally good. Even with some big stars in some of them, the quality wasn't there and that's what turned viewers off. Prime time networks have not done this stuff in a long time, but there are cable networks that continue on with this concept.

Now these days, you can look to Hallmark, Lifetime, Syfy, and Disney Channel for TV movies. I think people do go in, expecting lower tiered stuff for being on cable, though the examples mentioned are making the same movies over and over (Disney really depends on what they are making). It's the same romantic crap on Hallmark. Lifetime's lifeline is having these movies where there's abuse in women and they have to triumph over it. They need something in order to keep reruns of Grey's Anatomy exclusive on their channel. Syfy is cheesy and over the top, and they have embraced it. When you consider the Sharknado films to be some of their biggest money makers, they will milk whatever is big for them and continue to do so until it runs dry. They do run theatrical films, though some don't make sense being on that channel like James Bond.

It wasn't uncommon to see Disney making film after film on video and TV back then. I don't watch their TV channel, but I have a niece that does. I feel like there has been way less of their original movie stuff being on in favor of theatrical run ones. Whoever has taken over knows the market and has slowly gotten away from it, but hasn't killed it off. There was that question mark, especially with the rut of films Disney made outside of a few live action ones and Pixar in the 2000s. A lot of people don't care for a lot of the sequels made for video and TV. Whoever listened has put Disney on a bigger step towards being loved like they were in 30s up until the 60s and the late 80s up until the late 90s. They want people to love top notch films, not groan with a cheaply made film that goes for an hour and has the same cliche ending.

In the end, there's always some suckers that either are bored that they will watch TV movies or they think it's something good despite watching the same concept.