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The Movie Channel

The Movie Channel (TMC) is an American premium television network owned by Showtime Networks, a subsidiary of Paramount Global operated through its Paramount Media Networks division. The network's programming mainly features first-run theatrically released and independently produced motion pictures, and during promotional breaks between films, special behind-the-scenes features and movie trivia.

This article is about the American premium television network and sister channel of Showtime. For the unrelated, defunct television channel in the United Kingdom, see The Movie Channel (UK). For the programming format of television channels focused on movies, see movie channel.

Type

Pay television network

United States

Nationwide

New York City

  • English
  • Spanish (as SAP option; some films may be broadcast in their native language and subtitled in English)

1080i (HDTV)
(downscaled to letterboxed 480i for the SDTV feed

  • The Movie Channel East
  • The Movie Channel West
  • The Movie Channel Xtra East
  • The Movie Channel Xtra West

Paramount Media Networks (Paramount Global)

Showtime Networks

  • Chris McCarthy (Chairman/CEO, Showtime Networks)
  • Michael Crotty (EVP/CFO, Showtime Networks)
  • Tom Christie (COO, Showtime Networks)
List

  • April 1, 1973 (1973-04-01)
  • (original launch, as Star Channel)
  • December 1, 1979 (1979-12-01)
  • (relaunch, as The Movie Channel)

  • TMC: (Warner) Star Channel (1973–1979)
  • TMC Xtra: The Movie Channel 2 (1997–2001)

www.sho.com/the-movie-channel

Originally operated and sold as a standalone service (launching as Star Channel in April 1973), at present, The Movie Channel is receivable to pay television subscribers primarily as part of the multiplex tier of parent network Showtime. The channel, along with its parent network Showtime and sister network Flix, is headquartered at Paramount Plaza on the northern end of New York City's Broadway district.

History[edit]

Early history (1973–1979)[edit]

The Movie Channel traces its history to the development of Gridtronics, a pay television service which delivered videotaped feature films to cable systems throughout the United States. The concept was originally developed in the late 1960s by Alfred Stern and Gordon Fuqua, both executives at multiple system operator Television Communications Corporation (TVC) at the time, as part of a multi-channel service that was designed to include channels focusing on the arts, instructional programming and medical programs. The video-to-cable movie delivery concept was presented by Fuqua and Stern at the 1969 National Cable Television Association Convention. Over the course of the next several years, the two men subsequently discussed carriage agreements with other cable providers to distribute Gridtronics and engaged in discussions with various film studios to provide film content for the service. Following the creation of Dimension Pictures, TVC was purchased by Kinney National Company, the parent company of Dimension, in 1971, and gave the service the financial funding and content that it needed to launch.[1]


Kinney National Company's successor, Warner Communications, launched the Gridtronics service on April 1, 1973. Included among its initial offerings was the Warner Star Channel (later renamed Star Channel),[2] a service developed as a vehicle to promote the Warner Bros. film library (notably excluding the pre-1950 film library that was owned by United Artists at the time). The channel was initially offered on systems operated by Warner Cable Communications (later Time Warner Cable), and was eventually made available on Warner-Amex's experimental QUBE interactive service when the company launched it in 1977. Cable providers sometimes experienced technical problems trying to transmit the delivered tapes to viewers, especially when the tapes jammed during playback.

National expansion as The Movie Channel (1979–1983)[edit]

On January 1, 1979, Star Channel became a nationally distributed service after it was uplinked to satellite, becoming the third premium service to be distributed nationally through such a transmission method (after HBO, which was uplinked to satellite in September 1975, and Showtime, which was uplinked in March 1978). In April of that year, it began to share channel and transponder space with Warner Cable's newly launched children's network, Nickelodeon (an outgrowth of the company's former QUBE channel C-3 programming service, which had Pinwheel as its flagship program);[1] this resulted in the latter service switching to an encrypted signal during the regularly scheduled network transition at 10:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific Time on weekdays and 8:00 p.m. on weekends; Star Channel originally signed off at 4:00 am. Eastern and Pacific, three hours before the transponder space reverted to use by Nickelodeon. The channels were originally uplinked from a facility located next to WIVB-TV in Buffalo, NY; both later moved to Hauppauge, NY by 1981 (after a planned expansion to the Buffalo facility was scrapped following an inability to reach a long-term lease deal with WIVB's ownership).[3]


On September 14 of that year, American Express reached an agreement with Warner Communications to buy 50% of Warner Cable Corporation for $175 million in cash and short-term notes. Through the formation of the joint venture, which was incorporated in December 1979, Star Channel and Nickelodeon were folded into Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment (later Warner-Amex Cable Communications), a company which handled the operations of the group's cable channels (Warner Cable was folded into a separate jointly owned unit, the Warner Cable Corporation).[4] Warner-Amex executive John A. Schneider served as the company's president; other Warner-Amex staff that manned Star/The Movie Channel's initial management team included executive vice president John Lack, programming chief Robert Pittman, and Fred Seibert, who was in charge of developing on-air promotions.


On December 1, 1979, the network was relaunched as The Movie Channel; the first feature film to be broadcast on the relaunched service was the 1953 comedy Roman Holiday. On January 1, 1980, TMC discontinued its time-lease arrangement with Nickelodeon (then a sister network under the Warner, and later Viacom umbrellas) and became a 24-hour standalone service. At that point, TMC became the first premium channel to air R-rated films during the daytime hours[5] (HBO continues to not air any R-rated films on its primary channel before 8:00 pm. Eastern and Pacific Time as of 2017, except occasionally for films aired as part of its Sunday late-afternoon rebroadcast of the preceding Saturday's prime time movie premiere; TMC sister network Showtime, Cinemax, and now-defunct rival Spotlight did not run R-rated films during the daytime hours at the time, the former two surviving services would not schedule them before prime time until the late 1980s/early 1990s while another now-defunct rival Home Theater Network never ran any R-rated films by mode of that service's family-oriented format).


In 1981, The Movie Channel became one of the first television channels to broadcast movies in stereophonic audio; from that point until 1988, films presented in stereo were verbally and visually denoted in prime time lineup bumpers shown during promotional breaks within its daytime schedule – with titles for films available in stereo accompanied by the now-standard headphone symbol – and, until 1985, in a custom version of its feature presentation opening sequence (thereafter, films transmitted in the format were denoted along with the film rating during the latter open). As the standard for television broadcasts in stereo was a few years away, cable operators had to simulcast the multichannel audio feed through cable radio decoders using FM receivers. Interstitial segments that aired during breaks between films for much of the 1980s included Behind the Scenes (featuring biographies and interviews with actors appearing in films set to air on the network or being released theatrically), The Heart of Hollywood (borrowing its name from the slogan that TMC used concurrently during the segment's run from September 1985 to May 1988, and featuring more in-depth interviews with film stars), Reel Shorts (a showcase of live action and animated short films, which continued to air during extended breaks until 1991, by then under the "Film Shorts" moniker) and Reel Hits (featuring music videos for songs featured in films of that period and their accompanying soundtracks).

Operational merger with Showtime (1983–1985)[edit]

For much of its early years, The Movie Channel struggled in a race for subscribers in a pay television industry that pitted it against as many as seven cable-originated competitors, and even some over-the-air subscription services transmitted over independent stations in many U.S. cities such as ONTV and SelecTV. In addition to the launch of Cinemax as then-HBO parent Time Inc.'s movie-focused competitor to TMC in August 1980, the competition grew when Warner-Amex and Rainbow Media jointly launched the film and arts-focused Bravo (now a general entertainment basic cable channel, with a reality television focus) in September 1980; Walt Disney Productions threw itself into the fray when it announced plans in early 1982 to launch family-oriented The Disney Channel, a service which made its debut in April 1983 (it is now a basic cable channel, focusing mainly on children's programming).


In August 1982, MCA Inc. (then-owner of Universal Pictures), Gulf and Western Industries (then-owner of Paramount Pictures) and Warner Communications reached an agreement to jointly acquire TMC, under which the three companies would acquire a combined controlling 75% interest in the service (with each holding a 25% ownership stake) from Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment.[6] The proposal was guided by the motive of the studios wanting to increase their revenue share for licensing movie rights to premium television services; there were also concerns by the major studios that HBO's dominance of that market and its pre-buying of pay cable rights to films prior to their theatrical release would result in an undue balance of negotiating power over them by HBO, resulting in a lower than suitable licensing fee rate that would be paid to the distributors for individual titles. The three companies officially announced their agreement in principle to acquire interests in The Movie Channel on November 11, 1982.[7][8][9] Subsequently, in late December of that year, the U.S. Department of Justice (which had blocked a similar attempt by MCA, Gulf+Western, 20th Century Fox and Columbia Pictures to create a competing pay service, Premiere, in an antitrust case ruling less than two years earlier in January 1981) launched a routine preliminary inquiry into the proposed partnership.[10]


On January 7, 1983, Viacom International added itself as a partner and drafted an amendment to the proposal to consolidate The Movie Channel with the company's own competing premium service, Showtime (which Viacom had wholly acquired in August 1982, after buying out Group W Cable's 50% interest in Showtime for $75 million). Under the revised proposal, the four studios would each own a 22.58% stake in the two networks, with American Express owning a 9.68% minority interest. In addition, the consortium would appoint a management team separate from those employed by the two channels – which would continue to operate as separate services – to operate the joint venture. However, the deal ran into regulatory hurdles since Warner, Universal and Paramount received 50% of their respective total revenue from film releases and licensing fees from premium services; furthermore, Showtime and TMC combined would control about 30% of the pay cable marketplace, creating an oligopoly with HBO (which, in conjunction with Cinemax, controlled 60% of the market).[11][8][9]


After a four-month investigation resulted in the Department of Justice filing a civil antitrust lawsuit against the five parties to block the Showtime-TMC merger on June 10, 1983, the Department asked Warner and American Express to restructure the deal during hearings for the case.[12] The Department's decision – citing concerns, including some expressed by HBO management, that combining the assets of Showtime and TMC would stifle competition in the sale of their programming and that of other pay cable services to cable providers – was despite the fact that, under the original proposal, MCA, Gulf+Western, and Warner had each agreed to continue licensing films released by their respective movie studios to competing pay television networks.[8][9] The partners involved in the merger would also set standard prices for films that were acquired for broadcast on The Movie Channel and Showtime, either those produced by the studio partners or by unassociated film studios. To address the Justice Department's concerns over the deal, the four partners submitted another revised proposal for consideration on July 19, that included guarantees of conduct agreeing that Paramount, Universal and Warner Bros. would not receive higher residual licensing payments for films acquired by Showtime and TMC than that paid by other studios, and that all four partners would not permit the two channels in the venture to pay lower fees for films produced by the three studio partners than that paid by smaller pay television services for the same films.[13]


After the revised proposal was rejected on July 28, Warner Communications and American Express restructured the purchase to include only Viacom as a partner, bowing Gulf+Western and MCA out of the proposed partnership. The changes – which Justice Department officials acknowledged would "prevent any anti-competitive effect from arising" following the merger, by allowing other premium services to enter the market should the venture significantly raise licensing fee prices for films – led the Justice Department to drop its challenge to the merger agreement on August 12; the department formally approved the deal the following day on August 13.[8][9][14][15] When the deal was completed on September 6, 1983, the operations of The Movie Channel and Showtime were folded into a new holding company, Showtime/The Movie Channel, Inc., which was majority owned by Viacom (controlling 50% of the venture's common stock as well as investing $40 million in cash), with Warner Communications (which owned 31%) and Warner-Amex (which owned the remaining 19% interest) as minority partners[16][17] (the operational arrangement between The Movie Channel and Showtime is of a similar relationship to that between rival pay service Starz and its progenitor Starz Encore; as with Starz Encore to Starz, TMC operates as a secondary service to Showtime even though its launch, under the Star Channel brand, predates that of its parent network – Showtime launched on July 1, 1976 – by three years).


The Showtime-TMC joint venture also benefited The Movie Channel by allowing for the group to expand the channel's distribution. On December 12, 1983, the Times-Mirror Company announced that it would sell the subscriber base and transponder rights assigned to competing premium service Spotlight to Showtime-The Movie Channel, Inc. for an undisclosed price. Under the agreement, the four cable providers that backed the Spotlight venture – Times Mirror Cable, Storer Cable, Cox Cable and Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI) – would offer Spotlight subscribers who subscribe to any of the systems an option to subscribe to either Showtime or The Movie Channel as a replacement, with those dissatisfied with Showtime/TMC's program offerings following a two-month sampling period during February and March permitted to exchange it for another premium channel at no charge. After Spotlight ceased operations on February 1, 1984, Spotlight subscribers who subscribed to any of the participating systems began to automatically receive The Movie Channel in markets where a provider was already carrying Showtime. (In select Spotlight markets, Showtime was added to the provider as a replacement instead if neither service had been carried prior.)[18][19][20] Showtime-The Movie Channel President Michael Weinblatt estimated that approximately 100,000 subscribers of the four partner systems already received either Showtime or TMC, and that the absorption of Spotlight would increase the total number of paid subscribers to both channels by at least 650,000 to about eight million subscribers nationwide.[18]

Transfer to Viacom (1985–2005)[edit]

On August 10, 1985, after Time Inc. and cable provider Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI) jointly submitted a bid to buy the company for $900 million and the assumption of $500 million in debt as well as an earlier offer by American Express the previous month to buy out Warner's share of the company (under a clause in the agreement that allowed either company the option of buying out their partner's stake in Warner-Amex), Warner Communications exercised an option to acquire American Express' 50% share of Warner-Amex Cable Communications for $450 million. Among the options, barring that it chose to sell Viacom a 50% interest in the company for $450 million, the deal originally excluded Warner-Amex's 19% interest in Showtime-The Movie Channel, Inc.; that interest would have reverted to Warner, which intended to operate Warner-Amex as a wholly owned subsidiary.[21][22][23]


Two weeks later on August 26, Viacom acquired Warner Communications and Warner-Amex's combined 50% ownership interest in Showtime/The Movie Channel, Inc. as well as full ownership of Warner-Amex and the public shareholder interests in MTV Networks for $671.7 million. This gave Viacom exclusive ownership of both premium channels through its $500 million cash payment and acquisition of 1.625 million shares for Warner's 31% stake in Showtime/The Movie Channel, and Warner-Amex's 19% interest in the unit and its 60% interest in MTV Networks (Viacom had owned Showtime alone or jointly with other companies – previously in ventures with TelePrompTer Corporation, and later briefly, its successor Group W Cable – from the time it launched in July 1976). The buyout, part of an option given by Warner in its purchase of American Express' interest in MTV, was exercised in part to finance much of the buyout of Showtime/The Movie Channel without borrowing any money.[24][25][26][27] The subsidiary would eventually be renamed Showtime Networks, Inc. in 1988. Ironically, four years after the company sold its interests in Showtime and The Movie Channel, Warner Communications would acquire competitors HBO and Cinemax, when the company merged with Time Inc. in 1989 to form Time Warner.


In May 1986, TMC began incorporating regular on-air hosts to present the channel's afternoon and evening film presentations, and provide backstory on the production of those scheduled to be shown; the channel began using hosts on a regular basis after employing celebrity guest presenters to host special showcase stunts in the fall of 1985 (The Movie Channel would continue to feature guest hosts, such as Ron Howard, Daphne Zuniga, Shirley Jones and Frank Zappa, for programming stunts through much of the late 1980s after it hired full-time presenters). Hosts appearing on the channel between the late 1980s and the mid-1990s included Robert Osborne (then also working as a columnist for The Hollywood Reporter, and who also hosted the channel's Heart of Hollywood behind-the-scenes and interview interstitials),[28] Michelle Russell, Lauren Graham and Joe Bob Briggs (the pseudonym of actor and film critic John Irving Bloom, and host of the popular Saturday evening B-movie showcase Joe Bob's Drive-In Theater).[29]

Channels[edit]

List of channels[edit]

Depending on the service provider, The Movie Channel provides up to four multiplex channels – two 24-hour multiplex channels, both of which are simulcast in both standard definition and high definition – as well as a subscription video-on-demand service (The Movie Channel On Demand). The Movie Channel and multiplex service The Movie Channel Xtra respectively broadcast on both Eastern and Pacific Time Zone schedules. The individual coastal feeds of each channel are usually packaged together, resulting in the difference in local airtimes for a particular movie telecast between two geographic locations being three hours at most. Most subscription providers, however, only offer the east and west coast feeds of TMC's main channel and one coastal feed of TMC Xtra applicable to a particular region (the Eastern Time Zone feed in areas from the Central Time Zone eastward or the Pacific feed in areas from the Mountain Time Zone westward); some providers only offer the coastal feeds of the primary channel and TMC Xtra applicable to their region.


Showtime and Flix, which are also owned by ViacomCBS, operate as separate services. Although The Movie Channel is frequently sold together in a package with Showtime, TMC subscribers do not necessarily have to subscribe to the other two services. Prior to the advent of digital cable, many providers often sold The Movie Channel separately from Showtime, continuing for about two decades after Viacom acquired both Warner Communications and Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment's respective ownership interests of the two previously autonomous services in 1985. Showtime began offering all of its channels, including TMC, Flix and Sundance Channel (now AMC Networks-owned SundanceTV), in a single package by the early 2000s; this resulted in most providers (with the exception of Comcast, DirecTV and Dish Network) ceasing to sell or promote The Movie Channel separately from Showtime (Dish Network and DirecTV offer both TMC and TMC Xtra optionally as either a package with the remainder of the Showtime multiplex, or as part of a separate movie tier to subscribers that do not already have Showtime; both The Movie Channel and Starz Encore are the only U.S. premium channels to be offered to subscribers that do not subscribe to their co-owned premium services).


Although one or both of the channels have traditionally been carried alongside the Showtime multiplex channels on traditional pay television providers, as of 2024, The Movie Channel as well as Flix are not presently carried as live feeds on Paramount+'s premium tier (nor was it ever available on Showtime's defunct direct-to-consumer service and TV Everywhere platform Showtime Anytime, all of which only offer the Eastern and Pacific feeds of the main Showtime channel); the Paramount+ add-ons (and the predecessor Showtime aggregated OTT add-ons) sold through Apple TV Channels, Amazon Video Channels, The Roku Channel and YouTube Primetime Channels; or the Showtime add-ons sold through over-the-top subscription television services (including Hulu Live TV, Sling TV, DirecTV Stream, YouTube TV and Philo).

Programming[edit]

Movie library[edit]

As of April 2023, The Movie Channel – through Showtime – maintains exclusive first-run film licensing agreements with Amblin Partners (including releases produced in conjunction with DreamWorks Pictures and Participant),[53] IFC Films,[54] A24,[55] and Bleecker Street.[56]


The Movie Channel also shows sub-runs – runs of films that have already received broadcast or syndicated television airings – of theatrical films distributed by Sony Pictures (including content from Columbia Pictures, TriStar Pictures, Screen Gems, Revolution Studios and Morgan Creek Productions), Warner Bros. Pictures (including content from New Line Cinema), Universal Pictures (including content from subsidiary Focus Features), Open Road Films, Screen Media, Oscilloscope, Summit Entertainment (for films released prior to 2013), Paramount Pictures (for films released prior to 2017), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (including content from subsidiaries United Artists and Orion Pictures), Lionsgate (sub-run rights with the latter two studios are for films released prior to 2009), and Walt Disney Pictures (including content from Pixar, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures and Marvel Studios).


Many lesser-known film titles (particularly those released as independent films) that have either not received a theatrical release or were released on DVD or home video are also commonly broadcast on TMC. The window between a film's initial release in theaters and its initial screening on Showtime, The Movie Channel and Flix is wider than the grace period leading to a film's initial broadcast on HBO, Cinemax or Starz. Films to which Showtime holds the pay-TV rights will usually also run on The Movie Channel and sister channel Flix during the period of its term of licensing.

1979–1983: "All Movies, 24 Hours a Day" (alternately "All Movies, Only Movies, 24 Hours a Day"; used as an alternate slogan from 1983 to 1988)

1980–1982: "We're Taking the Movies to America"

[67]

1981–1983: "You've Got The Movie Channel, The Movies You Want to See, 24 Hours a Day"

[67]

1982–1983: "We Do Movies Better Because Movies Are All We Do"

1983–1984: "Anytime You Gotta Have A Movie" (commercial slogan)

1984–1988: "The Heart of Hollywood"

1988–1990: "A Whole Channel Devoted to Movies"

1990–1993: "A Movie Anytime You Want One"

[68]

1993–1997: "You're Never More Than Five Minutes Away from a Movie [on The Movie Channel]"

[69]

1997–2001: "100% Pure Movies, 100% Pure Fun"

2001–2006: "The Stuff Movies Are Made of"

2006–present: "Movies for Movie Lovers"

[70]

2014: "Nobody has it Better than on The Movie Channel" (secondary slogan)

Official website