The NBC Monday Movie was a television anthology series of films that debuted on February 4, 1963 (in the middle of the 1962-63 season). It was referred to as Monday Night at the Movies prior to the mid-1980s. Contrary to popular contemporary belief, the corporate initials, "NBC", were, at first, not part of the official title for the network's anthologies of old movies, and would not be for years to come. Thus, in 1964, when the show was transferred by the network's programming executives to Wednesday nights, it became Wednesday Night at the Movies. And in 1965, when the program moved to Tuesdays, it became Tuesday Night at the Movies. It would remain there until 1969. The name would henceforth change depending on whichever night of the week the program aired. Moreover, by 1968, there was once again a weekly Monday Night at the Movies on the air. It ran until 1997. The idea for the show came about when advertisers opted out of two 60-minute shows the network ran on Monday nights for the 1962-1963 season -- It's A Man's World (from 7:30-8:30 pm, Eastern Time) and Saints and Sinners (from 8:30-9:30), the latter of which suffered from having "no chemistry, and never any real ratings." Having experienced some audience success with Saturday Night at the Movies ever since its premiere in 1961, the network decided to acquire more feature films as a stop-gap measure for NBC's dismal numbers on Monday nights. Thus, a package of 42 movies from 20th Century Fox and 35 titles from MGM were purchased by the network for both its Monday and Saturday night movie series at a cost of $14 million. With a 7:30 pm (EST) start time, the movies of the show's first season were made up of mostly light comedies, westerns, an occasional swashbuckler such as Prince Valiant, and a couple of Pat Boone musicals. These types of films were also chosen because they usually ran under 100 minutes, the normal running-time for a two-hour movie slot (with commercial interruptions) in 1963.