Ken Seeber
Supporting Actor
- Joined
- Nov 5, 1999
- Messages
- 787
I know there has been a thread or two about some of the changes being made at American Movie Classics. This story from the Kansas City Star moved on the Knight Ridder wire today, and I though people here would find some interesting information:
By Robert W. Butler
Knight Ridder Newspapers
(KRT)
You could call it the cable TV version of entering puberty.
After 18 years on cable, American Movie Classics is going through a change of life fueled by new audience demands, growing competition and the need to make a dollar go as far as possible.
Most obvious among these recent changes: commercial breaks.
For most of its history American Movie Classics has been a commercial-free channel that showed old movies uninterrupted. No more.
These breaks are referred to by AMC officials as “intermissions.” Whatever they’re called, they look like commercials: In the middle of the film things will stop and we’ll get several minutes of ads.
“It began several months ago,” reported AMC publicist Jaime Saberito. “It’s one intermission per movie. And we just don’t put it in anywhere. We look for a spot in the film where a break will be as unobtrusive as possible. Usually they last for only two or three minutes.”
The reason? Economics and audience demand.
For most of its almost two decades on the air, AMC specialized in films from the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s. The channel got cable broadcast rights to these classics at a relatively low price because there was little demand for them. (For one thing, the majority were shot in black-and-white; younger audiences demand color.)
But in recent months the cable channel has been forced to reassess its definition of “classic,” a label that can reasonably be applied to some films that were new when AMC went on the air in 1984.
“Our research has been showing for some time that our viewers wanted newer movies,” Saberito said. “But the rights to newer movies cost more, and that means developing additional revenue streams.”
The answer: paid “intermissions.” Those commercial breaks underwrite the purchase of films like the “Godfather” and “Indiana Jones” series and “Predator,” which have drawn big numbers when shown on AMC.
Meanwhile, the creation of Turner Classic Movies in 1994 gave AMC its first serious competition. TCM controls a film library consisting of hundreds of vintage films from MGM, RKO and other studios, including such milestones as “Gone With the Wind,” “Citizen Kane” and “Ben-Hur.”
Many of those movies are no longer available to AMC — TCM is keeping them for itself. Of those MGM library films that are available to other cable channels, Turner Classic sets the broadcast fees. TCM has more or less cornered the market and can name its price — another reason AMC turned to commercials to pay for the films its shows.
Another change that has rattled purists is that AMC often will show the “television version” of some titles. Why? Even films 25 or 30 years old contain language and other elements some viewers may find objectionable.
“When AMC acquires a film from a studio, we receive it in a TV version, which means that it is edited for content — violence, nudity etc.,” said David Sehring, AMC’s senior vice president for acquisitions and programming. “This version airs in our ‘Big Ticket Movie’ time slot.
“We also make every effort to acquire the film in the theatrical version. This version, which is unedited, airs in the ‘Director’s Showcase’ time period and features the full-length version, based on the director’s original vision. Many times, this film is in letter-boxed format.”
Bottom line: The edited versions of films typically are shown in the early evening when younger viewers may be watching, Sehring said. The director’s cuts air later at night, where they attract more mature viewers and people who like to tape unedited versions of favorite films.
So far AMC has received “very little negative feedback” from viewers about the programming changes, according to Sehring. Evidently movie lovers are willing to put up with that “intermission” for a chance to see more recent films.
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(c) 2002, The Kansas City Star.
Visit The Star Web edition on the World Wide Web at http://www.kcstar.com/
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
