As TV movies emerged, first on ABC and soon after on CBS and NBC, the networks were inundated with ideas, treatments, news stories, books, and existing screenplays -- some of which deserved to be made.
Most didn't.
Each network developed its own style and formula for what began as 90 minutes and evolved into the standard of two hours. CBS and NBC at first were tough with "ripped from the headlines," socially important, current stories. ABC was initially light and fluffy and yet managed to elevate the genre with Buzz Kulick's groundbreaking "Brian's Song," which created (a) the bio pic (b) the sports story (c) the malady of the week. Ironically, these became the profile of the CBS movie.
Of course, the "accident" of David Wolper's "Roots" (with Fred Silverman running it each night "to get rid of it") changed the face of miniseries. NBC was all over the place, depending on who the movie chief was.
During the Steve White add Deanne Barkley years, NBC movies tried to have something important to say. The Lindy DeKoven and Tony Masucci years brought a bewildering sameness (blindly uninspired children-in-jeopardy week after week) and C & D level casting, production values and stories that turned audiences away with "didn't we see this crap before?"
NBC even turned over the actual production of a major portion of their inventory in a misbegotten deal with an indie O'Hara-Horowitz in which they made 34 movies for one third of the price of the regular TV movie. NBC used these pictures to bludgeon other producers crying for more money -- but what they really accomplished with these horrendous cheapies was an end to TV movies once and for all.
Talk about killing the golden goose.
Cliches for topics continued to abound. One such cliche was the "outward bound" adventure.
Some troubled soul, sometimes two, sometimes a family, attempts a precarious adventure, either structured or not, that leads to a tragedy or a triumph, a fish out of water who proves he (she, they) can overcome.
Each week our development group was subjected to dozens of outward bound stories while most networks were resisting them. I was smug enough to believe I would never touch one until:
Sometime in the mid-80's, Parade Magazine, a Sunday supplement in over 400 papers, featured a cover story about a Tucson, Ariz.-based boot camp to rehabilitae troubled teens called VisionQuest.
Bob Burton, a former East Coast social worker who wore cowboy boots and an ever-present white Indian reservation hat, secured agreements from Arizona judges to sentence juvenile infractors to a boot camp he created after his own experiences convinced him that traditional delinquency programs did not work.
He named it after an ancient Indian tradition that required young braves to fend for themselves in the wilderness to achieve adulthood.
At the camp and on the program's grueling wagon-train treks, the more than 600 boys and girls experienced a no-frills regimen devoid of television, gyms and video games. They lived in tents, they chopped wood, they rode and cared for their horses.
