1970s in American television
The success of the 1971 television movie Duel signaled the rise of movies produced specifically for television. Some featured a hero or heroine whose life was in jeopardy, while others were pilots for proposed TV series to be picked up by a network. Still others centered on the destructiveness of a certain disease, whether medical or social. Roots is a multi-part miniseries that ran on a number of consecutive nights in early 1977. It proved to be a huge hit in the ratings and thus paved the way for others of its kind like Shogun and The Thorn Birds.