The American Broadcasting Company coined the term after school special in 1972 with a series of made-for-television movies, usually dealing with controversial or socially relevant issues, that were generally broadcast in the late afternoon and meant to be viewed by school age children, particularly teenagers. The specials were generally broadcast four to six times a year during the school year, pre-empting local programming that would usually follow the network schedule in the late afternoon hours.
CBS distributed its own productions as the CBS Afternoon Playhouse (later known as CBS Schoolbreak Special). CBS also had a program called Famous Classic Tales, which aired Australian cartoons that were adapted from literature books (similar to Family Classic Tales). NBC had afterschool programs under the umbrella title Special Treat, while ABC had the ABC Afterschool Special. Other similar programs included the ABC Weekend Special.
Famous quotes containing the words school and/or special:
“I never went near the Wellesley College chapel in my four years there, but I am still amazed at the amount of Christian charity that school stuck us all with, a kind of glazed politeness in the face of boredom and stupidity. Tolerance, in the worst sense of the word.... How marvelous it would have been to go to a women’s college that encouraged impoliteness, that rewarded aggression, that encouraged argument.”
—Nora Ephron (b. 1941)
“Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.”
—William James (1842–1910)