Saturday Night at the Movies
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Saturday Night at the Movies is a weekly television series on TVOntario, the public educational television network in Ontario, Canada. The series presents classic movies, followed by interview and feature segments with directors, actors and other people involved in making the films presented.
First aired on March 30, 1974, the program was hosted by Elwy Yost. The first film shown was Ingmar Bergman's Through a Glass Darkly. The series has since presented almost 1,500 films and over 1,000 interviews.
In the late 1990s, the Progressive Conservative government of Mike Harris appointed Isabel Bassett as chair of TVOntario, with a mandate to refocus the network's broadcast schedule more clearly on education. Although there was some concern that the network would lose Saturday Night at the Movies, its highest-rated program, Bassett instead negotiated an agreement with York University to include the series in its film studies curriculum.
Yost retired as host of the series in 1999, and was replaced for one season by Shelagh Rogers. When Rogers moved to the CBC the following year to host the morning program on CBC Radio One, Saturday Night at the Movies changed to a hostless format. Some have argued that the hostless format was initiated because Yost had become so closely associated with the series that no one could replace him.
Saturday Night at the Movies is the longest-running series still seen on Canadian television, apart from network newscasts.