They (being NBC) did, using the same name and everything, but the results weren't nearly as successful.

The "Bates Motel" that airs on A&E and was recently renewed for a second season has been a hit with critics and pulled in millions of viewers for the cable network.

The "Bates Motel" that aired on NBC in the summer of 1987, on the other hand, only aired once, and a "USA Today" review said "this could be the worst thing you see on TV all year."

In fact, even the network didn't have high hopes for it at that point. What aired in July as a TV movie was in fact the two-hour series pilot that the network had passed on the previous fall.

It had already paid for the pilot, though, so in a longstanding network-TV tradition, NBC aired it in the summer when it had some space to fill.

However, at the time, NBC Entertainment president Brandon Tartikoff said (in a different "USA Today" article) that this was also sort of a last chance for the series.

"If ... it becomes something of a cult favorite, we should be able to pick it up."

It did not, and so they did not, and now that "Bates Motel" survives mostly as a sort of footnote, in the history of "Psycho" and on the resume of star Bud Cort.

The oddball film star, best known for his titular role in the 1971 classic "Harold and Maude," played Alex West, a former mental hospital roommate of Norman Bates. West took over running the motel, where Bates committed the murders that landed him in the hospital, after Bates died and willed it to him.

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