Ah, back in the days when there were but four channels available to most, I remember the Christmas schedules of 1992 being packed wall-to-wall with films wonderful and weird of all genres, eras and languages, amongst them The Dark Crystal, at prime-time on BBC2. ITV showed The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler some months later, on successive Friday Nights, along with a cycle of other efficient little 70s TV movie thrillers.
Of course everything was 4:3 in those days irrespecitve of its OAR, which was a bit shit, but considering what a narrowing there has been in the diversity of film scheduling in just a decade, we've lost a hell of a lot more besides a bit of the frame.