The most watched film of all time....

Figured it would be It's a Wonderful Life by now.

There was s time when i'd have said Oz. It was the only movie aired on an annual basis on network TV.

Now I wonder if AMC showing Shawshank every day hasn't pushed it past.

quote:

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It was the only movie aired on an annual basis on network TV

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This made me wonder how many years now that they have been airing It's a Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve?

I'm not comparing the two at all, but that part of your post peaked my curiosity in this regard.

Titanic
Star Wars
Wizard of OZ
Godfather
Gone With the Wind
Snow White
Shawshank
ET
Raiders

Are all at the top...

Shawshank?

How is that possible?

Unless you don't have or never had TV the last 15 years?

ET?? They rarely show this movie on TV. The rest of your list I'd agree with

A Christmas story has to be up there. They run a 24 hour marathon of it every year.

I'm actually intrigued by this question.

Television viewership is sharply down but shows are repeated more often.

But even with repeats, people have too many distractions today whereas there used to be only 4 channels until the 80s. Anytime something good was on, you watched that bad boy because you had NOTHING else to do.

It used to be a huge deal when they would have OZ, Sound of Music or Gone with the Wind on tv.

I have no clue who the actual king is at the moment.

My knee-jerk guess was "It's a Wonderful Life" or "Miracle on 34th Street", something that airs non-stop in the two weeks leading up to Christmas. I think that's just an American thing, though, and I'm guessing that that they don't air on heavy repeat like that in every Christian country on the planet. Further, the majority of the people on the planet don't live in Christian countries, so it's likely they've never even heard of those movies.

The more I think of it, worldwide's gonna be something like Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, Star Wars, etc. Something massive with worldwide appeal that's had decades to be viewed over and over.