There are some decent TV movies, ranging from "Duel" and "Brian's Song" to many of the TV movies that appear here in the U.S. on channels like HBO and TNT. The ones shown on Lifetime get a lot of criticism for their formulaic plots, and they're the types most people often imagine when they hear the phrase "TV Movie."

I actually remember the night in the early 1970s when "Duel" was first shown on "The ABC Movie of the Week."

They are usually pretty bad, but Duel was originally made for TV.
Sometimes they're supposed to be pilots for TV shows, like Viper and XIII. Viper got picked up (although I think the whole cast got changed), and XIII didn't. Because it was really awful.

Actually there is a category between Movie and Made for TV which is Direct-to-video (or DVD), but I often tend to put these in Made for TV just to not have to make another category Sometimes these could be put as normal movie though...

Exactly, like all those awful Disney film sequels.

Thanks, that means that a lot of sequels should go under that category then. There are plenty of movies (especially sequels) that go straight to video.

It simply means films that were never shown in theaters. A lot of films are made with the intention of releasing them in theaters, but turn out to be too bad and/or not popular enough and are therefore just shown on a television channel. Some films are made from the start as intended for TV-only broadcasts as well.

If the film was actually released in Cineams for even a brief period of time then it should simply be listed as "Movie". If it never made it to the big screen then it's a "Movie, Made for TV".

I just noticed that a few of my Contributions (CKY, CKY2k, & CKY 3) all got changed to "Movie, made for TV" so I was wondering what that category means. I wasn't really sure what category to list them under anyway but I didn't list them as made for TV as they were not made for TV and have not been shown on TV. So I was just wondering what all falls under the category.