Classic Television - Prime Time

The New CBS Tuesday Night Movies

Original Channel

CBS

Original Run

1971- 1974

The New CBS Tuesday Night Movies (known as The New CBS Friday Night Movies in its first season) was a weekly 90 minute television movie series seen on CBS from 1971 to 1974. During its first two seasons, the program was similar to ABC's Movie of the Week, in which it presented a new television movie once a week. In the fall of 1972, the series moved from Friday nights to Tuesdays, with its Friday night slot given back to traditional theatrical films under The CBS Friday Night Movies banner. (The New CBS Friday Night Movies replaced The CBS Friday Night Movies during its first season.)

During the 1973-1974 television season, CBS reinvented The New CBS Tuesday Night Movies by using an approach similar to the NBC Mystery Movie, with two rotating series (both produced by MGM Television) and a television movie seen on alternating weeks:

Shaft, a series television version of the 1970s blaxploitation film franchise (itself based on Ernest Tidyman's 1970 novel of the same name), starring Richard Roundtree, reprising the role of John Shaft.

Hawkins, starred James Stewart as Billy Jim Hawkins, a rural man who investigated the cases he was involved in, not unlike Stewart's role in the 1959 film Anatomy of a Murder.

Every third week was a television movie.

The New CBS Tuesday Night Movies was cancelled after the 1973-1974 television season. Television films seen on CBS would be incorporated into its Thursday and Friday night movie programs, beginning with the 1974-1975 season.