ABSTRACT
How did the U.S. motion picture industry react to the rapid innovation and diffusion of home television after World War II? Film history textbooks supply us with a uniform answer. The recalcitrant movie moguls ignored it; only when it was too late did they do anything about television and begin to release backtitles for ubiquitous showings on the early and late shows. Arthur Knight formulated the now-classic analysis this way:
By 1948, most movie makers were forced to recognize television as a major threat to their very existence. The odd thing is that they did nothing about it, except pretend to ignore it. 1
