ABC's Wide World of Entertainment
ABC's Wide World of Entertainment is a late night television block of programs created by the ABC television network. It premiered on January 8, 1973, and ended three years later. The title was based on the long-running broadcast "ABC's Wide World of Sports"; there was also an "ABC's Wide World of Mystery" broadcast from 1973 to 1978. Program schedule. Unable to find a single talk show to compete with NBC's highly successful "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson", the network aired a collection of comedy specials, documentaries, mystery movies , music concerts and talk shows with a variety of hosts. Included in the broadcasts were "The Dick Cavett Show", "Jack Paar Tonite", "Good Night America" (a newsmagazine hosted by Geraldo Rivera), the live concert series "In Concert", the UK-originated anthology series "Thriller", and "Comedy News" (a parody of "Eyewitness News" with an ensemble cast of comedians and satirists including Kenneth Mars, Marian Mercer, Robert Klein, Mort Sahl and Dick Gregory). Initially, Paar, Cavett, comedy specials and mystery movies were each given one week per month. Two nights of music concerts, broadcast every other Friday on weeks where specials or  movies were broadcast, completed the monthly schedule. The 1975 and 1976 editions of "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve" were also broadcast as ""Wide World Specials"". Monty Python broadcast. "Monty Python's Flying Circus", the British comedy sketch television series, taped its last episode in December 1974 and was syndicated to American public broadcasting soon after. On October 3, 1975, ABC aired the first of two edited compilations of sketches from the series as one of its "Wide World of Entertainment" comedy specials. The Python group represented by Terry Gilliam, the group's only American-born member, sued  ABC for copyright infringement. Zapruder film. On the March 6, 1975, edition of "Good Night America", Rivera had as his guests assassination of John F. Kennedy researchers Robert J. Groden and Dick Gregory, who presented the first-ever network television showing of the Zapruder film. The public's response and outrage to that television showing quickly led to the forming of the Hart-Schweiker investigation, contributed to the Church Committee Investigation on Intelligence Activities by the United States, and resulted in the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations investigation. ABC Late Night. The comedy and variety specials proved to  be unpopular and, along with most of the talk shows, were dropped by the summer of 1974. They were replaced with reruns of television films and the programming block was retitled "ABC Late Night" on January 12, 1976. In addition to movies (which were seen under the "ABC Movie of the Week" banner), the network aired a variety of prime-time series reruns including "Police Woman", "Mannix", "Starsky & Hutch", "Soap", "Barney Miller", "Charlie's Angels" and "Fantasy Island", with the only first-run programming a series of specials hosted by Geraldo Rivera and the sketch comedy series "Fridays". "ABC Late  Night" ended on October 22, 1982, being replaced with talk show "The Last Word" on October 26. "The Last Word" last aired on April 22, 1983, leaving ABC without regular late-night network programming–aside from "Nightline"–until January 6, 1992, when "World News Now" was launched.