Nelson appeared in many television movies such as "Along Came a Spider" (1970), "The Screaming Woman" (1972), "Runaway!" (1973), "Houston, We've Got a Problem" (1974), "The Missing Are Deadly" (1975), "Superdome" (1978), "Doctors' Private Lives" (1978) and "Crash" (1978), and served as host on the morning talk show "The Ed Nelson Show", which he hosted for three years. During the 1980s, Nelson took on the role of patriarchal Senator Mark Denning in the daytime serial "Capitol". In late 1986, Nelson was upset to discover that the show's writers had turned his character into a traitor, and quit the show in disgust, last airing in early January 1987, two months before the show's cancellation.