Television
The film has been broadcast annually on the ABC network since 1973, traditionally during the Easter holiday, as well as Passover. Like the commercial network telecasts of Ben-Hur, the lengthy film is always shown in one evening instead of being split up into two, making it necessary for ABC to pre-empt its entire network schedule between 7:00 pm and midnight/ET-PT on the nights that it is shown, although local affiliates have the right to tape delay the showing an hour ahead to 8 pm ET/PT to keep their schedules in line for early evening. Currently, the movie is shown the Saturday before Easter as part of the ABC Saturday Night Movie lineup. In 2010, the movie was broadcast in HDTV for the first time, which allowed the television audience to see it in its original VistaVision aspect ratio.
- Ratings by year (between 2007 and 2011)
| Number |
Year |
Episode |
Rating |
Share |
Rating/Share (18–49) |
Viewers (millions) |
Rank (timeslot) |
Rank (night) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "2007" | April 7, 2007 | TBA | TBA | TBA | 7.87 | TBA | TBA |
| 2 | "2008" | March 22, 2008 | 4.7 | 9 | 2.3/7 | 7.91 | 1 | 1 |
| 3 | "2009" | April 11, 2009 | 4.2 | 8 | 1.7/6 | 6.81 | 1 | 1 |
| 4 | "2010" | April 3, 2010 | TBA | TBA | 1.4/5 | 5.88 | 2 | 3 |
| 5 | "2011" | April 23, 2011 | TBA | TBA | 1.6/5 | 7.05 | 1 | 1 |
Read more about this topic: The Ten Commandments (1956 film)
Famous quotes containing the word television:
“So why do people keep on watching? The answer, by now, should be perfectly obvious: we love television because television brings us a world in which television does not exist. In fact, deep in their hearts, this is what the spuds crave most: a rich, new, participatory life.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict, it is the need to escape from a harsh reality. There are more television addicts, more baseball and football addicts, more movie addicts, and certainly more alcohol addicts in this country than there are narcotics addicts.”
—Shirley Chisholm (b. 1924)
“Addison DeWitt: Your next move, it seems to me, should be toward television.
Miss Caswell: Tell me this. Do they have auditions for television?
Addison DeWitt: That’s all television is, my dear. Nothing but auditions.”
—Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909–1993)