What Happened to the American Film Institute “100 Movies” CBS TV Specials?
No matter what you think of the American Film Institute’s Top 100 Lists of America’s greatest movies, their “100 Years, 100 (Put Film Genre Here)” TV specials produced every June for CBS were well worth the three-hour viewing time. When AFI started these specials in 1998, they not only set off the new firestorms about “Citizen Kane” being picked the #1 greatest American film, they also set off a comfortable tradition in creating a worthwhile and epic TV special on a major TV network. Usually aired in early to mid June each year, they were an inspiring respite during a time when TV falls into the proverbial canyon of repeats or new unreality shows and cable not offering much else of substance. It brought back a time when you could turn on network TV and see a substantive TV special celebrating retro media during an era when classic media was still accruing. Unlike some network TV specials of yore that examined classic entertainment, AFI’s specials were still highly charged with loads of
