TVO cancels ‘Saturday Night at the Movies’
Posted November 13, 2012 5:55 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
TVO has announced that Saturday Night at the Movies will be cancelled at the end of this season.
The station also said Tuesday many as 40 people will lose their job over the next year.
It cited government funding issues and focusing more on multi-platform content as the reason behind the decision.
“As a publicly-funded organization, TVO has a responsibility to deliver on its educational mission, with the greatest impact, across multiple platforms,” CEO Lisa de Wilde said in a release. “To do this we must find cost savings in some areas and direct more resources into others.”
Saturday Night at the Movies, which has been on the air for 38 years, made host Elwy Yost a household name. From 1974 to 1999 Yost conducted interviews with classic film stars, filmmakers, composers and many more in between the show’s double features. Yost died in 2011.
“These are tough decisions but times change and we have to adapt and innovate. When Saturday Night at the Movies began almost 40 years ago, it broke new ground but now entire TV networks and web services are dedicated to movies,” said de Wilde.
TVO will also be cancelling Allan Gregg in Conversation after 18 years as well as the Big Ideas lecture series.
De Wilde said the station will focus more on educational programming that viewers are unable to find on other networks.
In March, the McGuinty government indicated that public agencies, including TVO, needed to reduce their reliance on government funding.
