The Movie Channel (often abbreviated as TMC) is an American premium television network owned by Showtime Networks, a division of Skydance Corporation operated through its Paramount Media Networks division. Not including CBS, it is the oldest network owned by Paramount. The Movie Channel'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. Originally operated and sold as a standalone service (launching as Star Channel in February 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 Early history (1973–1979) 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. At the time of restructuring, TVC was purchased by Kinney National Company, the parent company of Warner Bros., in 1971, and gave the service the financial funding and content that it needed to launch.
Kinney National Company's successor, Warner Communications, launched the Star Channel service to ten cable systems operated by Warner Cable Communications on February 8, 1973, with showings of The Candidate and Escape from the Planet of the Apes interspersed with film trailers and travelogues. Star Channel was 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). It would eventually be 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) 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); 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, New York; both later moved downstate to Hauppauge 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).
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). Warner-Amex executive John A. Schneider served as the company's president; other Warner-Amex staff that composed 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 3, 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 (HBO continues to not air any R-rated films on its primary channel before 8:00 pm. Eastern and Pacific Time , 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) 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 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. 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. 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.
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).