On one extraordinary February night in 1979, three television networks went to war. It was the Sunday night of sweeps week, when ad rates for the upcoming season were set, and CBS decided to go for the gold by running Gone with the Wind, the most popular movie ever made. Rather than surrender to this mighty gambit, NBC decided to play hardball—and scheduled One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a huge box-office success that had won the best picture Oscar three years earlier.
And what did ABC do? It chose to air a made-for-television movie made in just 30 days starring Kurt Russell, then primarily known for having appeared in really bad Disney movies as a teenager a decade earlier—and it was directed by John Carpenter, whose only notable directorial effort was the low-budget horror movie...