In the 1970s, when I read TV Guide for overnight Friday/early Saturday and overnight Saturday/early Sunday, the very late movies on the over-the-air channels--the ones between 3:30 and 5 a.m.--always had "time approximate" as their starting times, as opposed to an actual time. Why was this?
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time approximate
- Thread starter skippercollector
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I do remember "time approximate after football" in the TV Guide listings, but that would be different.
The movies were almost always one of three things:
1. Italian gladiator/gods and goddesses movies, dubbed
2. Japanese monster movies, dubbed
3. American International movies, AKA Frankie and Annette movies
1. Italian gladiator/gods and goddesses movies, dubbed
2. Japanese monster movies, dubbed
3. American International movies, AKA Frankie and Annette movies
You could also include 50's horror or sci-fi movies, a lot of which came from American International.
Or that smash hit called "Commercial Program."
Being a night-owl in those days, I thought that perhaps the stations just didn't have their running times figured out. You have some old movie that runs - say 1 hour, 53 minutes, then you cram in 40 minutes of commercials. You would have to edit the film again to get it to fit into a tidy time slot, so it's probably easier to say "time approximate."
Many movie "shows" on broadcast TV in that era butchered films really badly, like the 6 O'Clock Movie (later 6:30 Movie) on the ABC O&Os like KABC in Los Angeles. The time slot was only 90 minutes, then you add commercials. In some cases, they would run films over 2 days to fit it all in, but mostly they would just butcher the film, forcing a 105 minute (or whatever) film into a 90 minute time slot. Once you add the commercials, they probably ended up cutting out half the film.
In the late 90's-early 2000's, TV Land would occasionally sign off for about half an hour late at night under the guise of "Bars and Tones". When I was younger, I thought it was some bizarre workout tape infomercial.
IIRC, TV Guide in print used five-minute intervals for listings. If a show was scheduled at some other time, I believe such a label would apply.
On some channels in Charter's TV Guide they will have Network testing listed for late night/early AM.
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