Pac-Rat

http://tv.yahoo.com/news/va/20020513/102127370600.html

AMC Unveils More Contemporary Slate, Extra Ads
Monday May 13 12:08 AM ET


AMC has made it official: The network is marching forward into the 1980s and '90s, dumping black-and-white golden oldies in favor of pictures like "Raiders of the Lost Ark," "Speed" and "Predator."

But AMC will continue to air movies from the '30s, '40s and '50s on a new, commercial-free digital cable network, AMC's Hollywood Classics, which will debut in October.

That's the good news for movie fans. The bad news is that AMC will double its number of commercials, from four to eight minutes an hour.

Kate McEnroe, president of AMC Networks, said she had to stuff extra blurbs into the schedule for two reasons:

= Cable operators, groaning under the weight of the huge license fees they pay for ESPN, TNT, Disney Channel and regional sports networks, are refusing to pony up anything more than minuscule cost-of-living increases to networks like AMC.

= This cable-operator reluctance has forced AMC to harvest more of its revenues from advertising to pay the bills for newer movies and for the movie-related informational programming that will be a big part of the new strategy. To get the rights to more recent titles, AMC has to go up against aggressive bidders like TBS, TNT, USA, FX and TNN.

McEnroe said that even though AMC is doubling its current commercial load, eight minutes is still far less than the average of 12 minutes an hour that most ad-supported cable networks shoehorn into their lineups.

No cable operator has signed for Hollywood Classics yet, although McEnroe said there'll be some carriage announcements in the near future.

One of AMC's fiercest competitors, Tom Karsch, exec VP and general manager of the commercial-free Turner Classic Movies, said AMC has made a devil's bargain by accepting advertising.

Karsch said ad agencies are dictating AMC's push to schedule more recent movies, which attract younger viewers whose brand loyalties are not fully formed, making them susceptible to enticing advertiser messages.

The older viewers who dote on vintage movies are much less likely to change, say, their brand of toothpaste. Many advertisers, Karsch said, find it a waste of time and money to pitch products to older people who are set in their ways.



[rant]
I can't believe how far this station has fallen. A channel that once had film preservation marathons is now having thier programming dictated to them by advertisers. A station that showed "Deer Hunter" uncut and OAR, will be showing "Speed" pan-n-scan and cut. And why are they trying to compete with TNN, USA, FX, and so on? The format is(was) com[letely different. That would be like LIFETIME competing against COMEDY CENTRAL. Who's running this station? The same people that are driving SCI-FI into the ground?
And they better not take off my "Stooges" and "Rascals"!
[/rant]

marty888

I quit watching both BRAVO and AMC when commercials reared their ugly heads - life is too short!

Jason

And they're less likely to pony up the extra money for digital cable, too.

This is a bad move. You can see movies like Speed all over cable.

Wag The Frog

So basically they are going to do what TNN did and go from being a niche channel to being another TBS/USA clone. All they need now is a pointless black bar and an amazingly stupid slogan like "We've got pop!" to complete the transformation. I can understand how AMC can't compete with the huge library and AOL-TW muscle of Turner Classic Movies, but this strategy is horrible. At LEAST show your films uncut at night or something. Anything to differentiate yourself from the USA/TBS/TNN clones besides "we show a few less commercials per hour." Anyone wanna guess how long that will last anyway?

Charlie Goose

Same here. I don't bother with either of those channels anymore. I watch IFC and TCM.

Honk!

kevin75

it has never been the same since bob dorian left. amc.

Pants

What is disapointing is that as we get more and more cable channels yet the channels themselves get more and more similar. Rather then having nitch networks, the channels copy eachother untill they are virtually indistinguishable.

As for 8 minutes of advertising, just wait, it will increase. They will slowly increase the minutes per hour untill AMC is like Bravo. Have you ever tried to watch a movie on Bravo? They have more comercials then any channel! They go to break every 10 minutes.

Most disapointing of all is that the new AMC CLASSICS, or what ever, will only be on Dish. The cable companies should be mad at the basic cable networks, because the quality is slipping, the diversity is vanishing, and all the quality and diversity is going onto the networks that are only available on Dish systems. In the near future everyone will get dish because the basic cable systems will suck so much.

clemente

A channel which aire commercial-free movies from the 30's, 40's and 50s. My god, that would be such a great cable network, why hasn't someone though of this before!


Of course I wouldn't want classic movies on AMC.
Music videos of MTV, why would I want that.

Bunch of ****ing idiots.

kevin75

yeah they could be like abc, who took 3 hours to show notting hill last saturday which is a 2 hr. movie.

Josh-da-man

You ever notice how cable channels seem to want to mutate into something they never set out to be?

MTV started out by playing music. Then, it was all (stupid) game shows like Singled Out, and "reality" shows like Real World and Road Rules. The videos they originally started out with then got moved to M2.

AMC started out by playing classic movies. Now they're just playing the same crap we have on the other forty channels. Now, the original concept is being shifted to the Dish network.

zig

doh! they just added this channel to my cable lineup today.. looks like i missed the boat.

Rypro 525

also, amc will show them cropped if they were shot in widescreen.