The Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly known simply as Fox and stylized in all caps, is an American commercial broadcast television network owned by the Fox Entertainment division of Fox Corporation, headquartered at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Midtown Manhattan. Fox hosts additional offices at the Fox Network Center in Los Angeles and at the Fox Media Center in Tempe, Arizona. Launched as a competitor to the Big Three television networks on October 9, 1986, Fox went on to become the most successful attempt at a fourth television network. It was the highest-rated free-to-air network in the 18–49 demographic from 2004 to 2012 and 2020 to 2021, and was the most-watched American television network in total viewership during the 2007–08 season.
The following television-related events took place during 1961.
Desilu Productions, Inc. was an American television production company founded and co-owned by husband and wife Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. The company is best known for shows such as I Love Lucy, The Lucy Show, Mannix, The Untouchables, Mission: Impossible and Star Trek. Until 1962, Desilu was the second-largest independent television production company in the United States, behind MCA's Revue Studios, until MCA bought Universal Pictures and Desilu became and remained the number-one independent production company, until Ball sold it to Gulf and Western Industries in 1968.
Dean Jagger was an American film, stage, and television actor who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Henry King's Twelve O'Clock High (1949).
How to Marry a Millionaire is a 1953 American screwball comedy film directed by Jean Negulesco and written and produced by Nunnally Johnson. The screenplay was based on the plays The Greeks Had a Word for It (1930) by Zoe Akins and Loco (1946) by Dale Eunson and Katherine Albert.
The NBC Monday Movie was a television anthology series of films that debuted on February 4, 1963. It was referred to as Monday Night at the Movies prior to the mid-1980s. Contrary to popular contemporary belief, the corporate initials, "NBC", were, at first, not part of the official title for the network's anthologies of old movies, and would not be for years to come. Thus, in 1964, when the show was transferred by the network's programming executives to Wednesday nights, it became Wednesday Night at the Movies. And in 1965, when the program moved to Tuesdays, it became Tuesday Night at the Movies. It would remain there until 1969. The name would henceforth change depending on whichever night of the week the program aired. Moreover, by 1968, there was once again a weekly Monday Night at the Movies on the air. It ran until 1997.
The ABC Sunday Night Movie is a television program that aired on Sunday nights, first for a brief time in 1962 under the title Hollywood Special to supposedly replace an open time slot for the TV show Bus Stop, which was cancelled after March 1962. It then began airing regularly under its more commonly known title from late 1964 to 1998, on ABC. Since 2004, it has aired sporadically as a special program, now titled the ABC Sunday Movie of the Week, though as of the 2011-12 television season, the only films in this timeslot were aired under the Hallmark Hall of Fame banner, which transferred to ABC in that season. However, in 2014, The Hallmark Hall of Fame moved exclusively to cable on the Hallmark Channel. As a result of this, the Sunday Night Movie is now exclusively relegated to two special holiday movies, The Sound of Music every holiday season and The Ten Commandments every Easter.
Thomas Lester Tryon was an American actor and novelist. As an actor, he was billed as Tom Tryon and is best known for playing the title role in the film The Cardinal (1963), featured roles in the war films The Longest Day (1962) and In Harm's Way (1965), acting with John Wayne in both movies, and especially the Walt Disney television character Texas John Slaughter (1958–1961). Tryon later turned to the writing of prose fiction and screenplays, and wrote several successful science fiction, horror and mystery novels as Thomas Tryon.
Irving Berlin's There's No Business Like Show Business is a 1954 American musical comedy-drama film directed by Walter Lang. It stars an ensemble cast, consisting of Ethel Merman, Donald O'Connor, Marilyn Monroe, Dan Dailey, Johnnie Ray, and Mitzi Gaynor.
Sheree North was an American actress, dancer, and singer, known for being one of 20th Century-Fox's intended successors to Marilyn Monroe.
Seven Arts Productions was a production company which made films for release by other studios. It was founded in 1957 by Eliot Hyman, Ray Stark, and Norman Katz.
United Artists Television (UATV) was an American television production/distribution studio of United Artists Corporation that was formed on January 1, 1958. The company is remembered for producing series such as This Man Dawson, World of Giants, Stoney Burke, The Outer Limits, Gilligan's Island, My Mother the Car, The Fugitive, The Rat Patrol, thirtysomething, The New Phil Silvers Show, The Patty Duke Show and The Pink Panther Show. In September 2014, the studio briefly returned to full-time TV production under the new management of United Artists Media Group (UAMG), led in part by husband and wife producers Mark Burnett and Roma Downey. With its folding back into MGM Television, UATV was temporarily dormant until 2020 when MGM Television was reincorporated.
20th Television is an American television production company which is a division of Disney Television Studios, part of The Walt Disney Company. Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment distributes the television series produced by 20th Television in home media formats through the 20th Century Home Entertainment banner.
Merry Anders was an American actress who appeared in a number of television programs and films from the 1950s until her retirement from the screen in 1972.
Movie 4 is a television program that aired at various times, but predominantly weekday afternoons, on various television stations on channel 4, including WNBC-TV in New York City from 1956 to 1974. WNBC's program aired top-rank first-run movies and other future classics from Hollywood, as well as foreign films. As with other movie shows of 90-minute length, films that ran longer were often divided into two parts.
In American television terminology, a fourth network is a reference to a fourth commercial broadcast (over-the-air) television network, as opposed to the Big Three television networks that dominated U.S. television from the 1950s to the 1980s: ABC, CBS and NBC.
NBC Saturday Night at the Movies was the first TV show to broadcast in color relatively recent feature films from major studios. The series premiered on September 23, 1961, and ran until October 1978, spawning many imitators. Previously, television stations had been only been able to show older, low-budget, black-and-white films that wouldn't be shown at movie theaters. In the late 1970s, competition from cable television and home video led to a decline in viewership.
Marilyn is a 1963 documentary film based on the life of the 1950s to early 1960's actress and sex symbol Marilyn Monroe. The film, directed by Harold Medford, was released by 20th Century Fox, and was narrated by Rock Hudson.
Movies! is an American free-to-air television network, owned by Popcorn Entertainment, LLC, a joint venture between Weigel Broadcasting and the Fox Television Stations subsidiary of Fox Corporation. The network's programming emphasizes feature films but also Modern E/I programming on Sunday mornings produced/distributed by Storrs Media/Telco Productions. The network's programming and advertising operations are based in Weigel Broadcasting's headquarters on North Halsted Street in Chicago, Illinois.
CBS Thursday Night Movie was the network's first venture into the weekly televising of then-recent theatrical films, debuting at the start of the 1965–1966 season, from 9:00 to 11 p.m.. CBS was the last of the three U.S. major television networks to schedule a regular prime-time array of movies. Unlike its two competitors, CBS had delayed running feature films at the behest of the network's hierarchy. Indeed, as far back as 1960, when Paramount Pictures offered a huge backlog of pre-1948 titles for sale to television for $50 million, James T. Aubrey, program director at CBS, negotiated with the studio to buy the package for the network. Aubrey summed up his thinking this way: "I decided that the feature film was the thing for TV. A $250,000 specially-tailored television show just could not compete with a film that cost three or four million dollars." However, the network's chairman, William Paley, who considered the scheduling of old movies "uncreative", vetoed the Paramount transaction.