The Bridge On The River Kwai - First Telecast

First Telecast

The film was first telecast, uncut, by ABC-TV in color on the evening of September 25, 1966, as a three hours-plus special on The ABC Sunday Night Movie. The telecast of the film lasted more than three hours because of the commercial breaks. It was still highly unusual at that time for a television network to show such a long film in one evening; most films of that length were still generally split into two parts and shown over two evenings. But the unusual move paid off for ABC—the telecast drew huge ratings. On the evenings of January 28 and 29, 1973, ABC telecast another David Lean color spectacular, Lawrence of Arabia, but that telecast was split into two parts over two evenings.