I can still remember where NBC broke for one of the commercials in The Day the Earth Stood Still: just after Klaatu runs out of the taxi and is shot in the street, then tells Patricia Neal, "Get that message to Gort." As she ducks down the pedestrian underpass they faded to an ad.
I have no idea why I remember that more than half a century later.
Anyway, I also first saw No Highway in the Sky on NBC Saturday Night at the Movies and can remember the introduction to the film by the network (showing the cast members in shots from the movie, while the announcer says their names before announcing the title).
On the downside, it was the need to show CinemaScope and other widescreen films in what we today call "full screen" on television -- specifically, for NBC Saturday Night at the Movies -- that the technique of "pan and scan" was first developed. Thus began decades of seeing such films, often with half or more of their picture cut off, in grainy prints all over commercial television. Of course, that technique wasn't needed for non-'Scope films like TDTESS or NHITS, but many other CinemaScope films from Fox shown on NBC, and then later other widescreen films on other channels, were butchered in this manner. Today few people any longer accept p&s prints, but back in 1961 it was thought of so highly that the men who developed it won an Academy Award for their "invention".
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