TV & VIDEO - Jan. 10, 1989

Director Nicholas Meyer says that ABC-TV will “do anything it takes to push, cram and squeeze ‘The Day After’ into a two-hour format” in a letter protesting the network’s plan to cut 23 1/2 minutes from the landmark made-for-TV movie about the aftermath of nuclear war. ABC plans to re-air the program on Jan. 23. It was first broadcast in 1983. “ ‘The Day After’ was censored by ABC with elisions, qualifiers and modifiers before it barely made it on the air the first time,” Meyer charges in a letter to Andre de Szekely, vice president of motion picture production for Capital Cities-ABC.