Editing The Bridge on the River Kwai (section)

==First TV broadcast==
[[American Broadcasting Company|ABC]], sponsored by [[Ford Motor Company|Ford]], paid a record $1.8 million for the television rights for two screenings in the United States.<ref name=tv>{{cite magazine|magazine=[[Daily Variety]]|date=28 July 1967|page=1|title='Bounty' Nicks Ford $2.3 Mil; A TV Record}}</ref> The 167-minute film was first telecast, uncut, in colour, on the evening of 25 September 1966, as a three hours-plus ABC Movie Special. The telecast of the film lasted more than three hours because of the commercial breaks. It was still highly unusual at that time for a television network to show such a long film in one evening; most films of that length were still generally split into two parts and shown over two evenings. But the unusual move paid off for ABC—the telecast drew huge ratings with a record audience of 72 million<ref name=tv/> and a [[Nielsen rating]] of 38.3 and an audience share of 61%.<ref>{{cite magazine|title=Hit Movies on U.S. TV Since 1961|magazine=[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]]|date=24 January 1990|page=160}}</ref><ref name="ratings">Gowran, Clay (11 October 1966) [http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1966/10/11/page/48/article/nielsen-ratings-are-dim-on-new-shows Nielsen Ratings Are Dim on New Shows] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160629223758/http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1966/10/11/page/48/article/nielsen-ratings-are-dim-on-new-shows/ |date=29 June 2016 }}, ''[[Chicago Tribune]]'' (noting film received a 38.3 rating to lead the national Nielsen ratings)</ref><ref>{{cite magazine|title=Alltime Top 20 Movies on TV|magazine=[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]]|date=13 December 1972|page=26|url=https://archive.org/details/sim_variety_1972-12-13_269_5/page/26/mode/1up|access-date=10 December 2023|via=[[Internet Archive]]}}</ref>