Posted on 10/17/2005 8:12:46 PM PDT by lowbridge
AMC: What makes a movie a 'classic'?
You can actually sue a TV channel for sucking -- and win. That's the lesson of today's legal victory against AMC, in a breach of contract suit filed by Time Warner Cable (like EW.com, a division of Time Warner).
Like some viewers who remember when AMC stood for ''American Movie Classics,'' the cable operator complained that AMC doesn't show classic movies much anymore. (These days, the channel just goes by the abbreviation ''AMC,'' as if to gloss over the word ''Classics,'' much like KFC, which doesn't want to remind anyone in our calorie-conscious era that the ''F'' stands for ''Fried.'') A look at this month's AMC schedule, which does include some genuine classics and rarities (like two John Wayne movies that haven't been televised in 25 years), reveals that too much of AMC's schedule is given over to decidedly non-classic films of the last two decades, like Death Warrant, Braddock: Missing in Action, and Jaws: The Revenge.
''We think we're programming classics to all ages,'' AMC executive Ed Carroll told the New York Times earlier this week. ''To my kids Home Alone and E.T. are classics, Risky Business is to me; to my dad, To Kill a Mockingbird.'' Still, it's clear that AMC is not playing on the same field as Turner Classic Movies, which airs movies from the 1930s to the '60s, unedited and without commercials. That's what AMC used to do, but when TCM came along a decade ago with its vast, exclusive movie library, AMC apparently decided it couldn't compete and abandoned the field, resulting in the format change that prompted the lawsuit.
Still, the format change has boosted AMC's ratings. Which makes me wonder: Is Carroll right? Is the definition of ''classic'' really that elastic? What exactly makes a movie a classic?
Bada bing :-)
If true, that opens up a whole range of TV channels. Lawyers, on your mark, get ready, go!
yeah agreed,, and any film John Wayne kicks liberal ass is a classic with me
I used to love AMC on the weekends when they showd American Pop, I think it was called. They had the Beach Blankent movies. The spy movies with James Coburn, I think, Flint, I think.
Classic clips from Hubbaballo and other short clips.
My favorite was Tina Louise working out in high heels! LOL! That was great.
The A&E channel has also made a format change. Fewer biographies of the truly great (Jefferson, Socrates) and more biographies of those indispensable rock stars. We don't get the Biography channel, maybe they do all the historical figures? In the meantime, A&E has filled their schedule with crime shows. We stopped watching it after we learned a thousand ways to commit murder and get away with it.
What gets me are these silly four team basketball tournaments that are called "classics" even in their first year of competition.
What gets me are these silly four team basketball tournaments that are called "classics" even in their first year of competition.
Yes! American Pop was my favorite! The low budget drive in stuff they always showed. Ah, the Beach Party movies! (Many of which I still have on videotape. Taped off of American Pop when I still had cable. Lost my cable tv not too long after AMC went downhill)
Speaking of the Beach Party movies, there are two excellent books that deal with that genre:
Hollywood Surf and Beach Movies: The First Wave, 1959-1969
and
It's Party Time: A Musical Appreciation of the Beach Party Film Genre
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