The all-in-one THE TROUBLE WITH AMC thread (2 Viewers)

[Raasean Asaad]

Good.

 

[Michael Harris]

Unfortunately they are not an option unless I go beyond the extended basic cable I get from COMCAST. I hate to say it but thank goodness for TMC. I guess it is good that Ted but away his Crayolas and embraced movies the way they were meant to be seen.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

TCM's the only decent movie channel on basic cable here, too.

 

[Jason_Els]

TCM is a God-send. An outstanding channel for movie buffs. I watch only a handful of channels and this one I watch most.

AMC has gone from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde and shows no signs of coming back. I haven't watched it since Bob Dorian was sacked. From that point on it went downhill fast.

 

[Jim Dalton]

I am so glad to see that this thread has taken off.
Mainly because I hope that some junior woodchuck at AMC would see what their viewers were saying and maybe, just maybe, have the guts to do something about it.

I can tolerate the commercials, even though they do disturb the flow of a movie. After all, these people have to make money and I am certainly not a communist or socialist.

My disgust with AMC 3 years ago during Monster Fest. Here we are, just a few days before Halloween when they are doing heavy advertisements for their monster movie marathon, and they were showing a musical!

I shot off an e-mail to the company and received (as usual) a standard form reply of "Thank you for writing to AMC. We value your viewership and your input."

So I turned it off, pulled out my videos and had my own monster-movie marathon. TAKE THAT AMC!!!

 

[Tommy G]

I haven't watched AMC for a couple of years now due to the same things already raised in this thread. TCM and IFC are the only ones I'll turn to due to the fact that they are the only ones included in my dish package that show them in OAR and uncut.

 

[Robert Anthony]

read this in a posting over at Chud.com:


This channel has pulled a COMPLETE 180 from when they first showed up on the scene. It's bad enough they started editing for content, and then it was worse when they started running commercials. Then they started showing nothing but warmed over garbage, and NOW they're trying to reinforce the notion that black bars are BAD and are causing you to LOSE picture.

This actually pissed me off.

 

[EricSchulz]

I pretty much gave up on AMC when Bob Dorian (wasn't that his name?) left. Turner Classic Movies rocks!

 

[Tony-B]

AMC used to piss me off. Now they fucking piss me off and can go to hell.

 

[Michael Harris]

When did AMC go over to the dark side? When I left the U.S. in '96 it was still commercial free and devoted to real classics and proper presentation. I return last year and it has gone to hell along with Bravo (now the "Queer Eye", Poker, West Wing rerun channel). Did AMC get bought out by someone the same way Bravo was acquired by NBC?

 

[Ray H]

They had already started going over to the dark side when I first started getting the channel in about mid 2000. They aired the occasional movie in widescreen but they were mostly in fullscreen with only one commercial break somewhere in the middle. Then they went and got a new design (movies for movie people? yeah, right!) and pretty much stopped showing classics in favor for stuff like Predator 2 and Friday the 13th Part 50 or something. Now they're just terrible. Fullscreen all the time (with maybe the rare exception of their DVD on TV features). They're horrible.

At least IFC is still pretty good (unless I missed something).

 

[Joshua_W]

AMC has been pretty much useless for the last couple of years when they started playing the same shit you can see on TNT and USA.

 

[David_Blackwell]

Yeah, AMC went downhill after it got bought up by the same people who own IFC. Turner Classic Movies does rock.

 

[Travis_S]

This is just unbelievable!
Alien Resurrection is being shown on AMC?!

I saw an ad like this one a while ago and I was just stunned by it. They are perpetuating the myth that wide screen is not showing the viewer the whole picture. AMC used to be one of my favorite channels, I don't know what caused it to sink so low. Does AMC still stand for American Movie Classics?

 

[MatthewA]

Good God, these people need to be put out of business poste haste. Why don't they just get the rights to "Dude Where's My Car" and be done with it?

 

[Malcolm R]

Are you sure they were actually saying P&S is better, or were they just illustrating the difference between P&S and letterbox for their DVD-TV programming where they feature both versions?

From their website FAQ:



I believe AMC still stands for "American Movie Classics," but they've broadened their definition of classics considerably. :rolleyes

 

[Michael Harris]

The same way TNT can call a recent airing of "Wild Wild West" a new classic.

 

[SteveK]

I don't even bother checking the AMC listings anymore, but I do flip past the channel when surfing, and it's also very close to Turner Classic Movies on the Dish lineup. I remember seeing the message at the start of one of the movies they recently presented. Not only was the film modified for P&S, it was also edited for content AND time compressed. Strike 3!

I'm so thankful for TCM. Hundreds of movies each month, almost always in OAR and no commercials whatsoever. TCM is by far my favorite channel. Fox Movies is also pretty good, but you have to be more careful because they do show P&S versions of most of their movies (although they claim to show both P&S and widescreen whenever possible). IFC is decent, but unfortunately you can't always rely on them to show OAR, but they do seem to be showing it more frequently now than before.

I hope that TCM never changes their programming philosophy. I watch TCM more than any other single channel, and probably watch it more than all other channels combined. Once upon a time, AMC was just as good as TCM, but obviously they've gone completely downhill. As I said above, I don't even bother looking at their listings. Sad, especially remembering the way they used to be.

Steve K.

 

[Raasean Asaad]

Didn't they lose a lot of viewers after they made those changes?

 

[Malcolm R]

Don't think so. I believe they actually claimed their ratings went up.