![]() On December 1, 1990, AMC began operating on a 24-hour-a-day schedule.īeginning in 1993, AMC presented an annual Film Preservation Festival to raise awareness of and funding for film preservation. By 1989, AMC was available to 39 million subscribers in the U.S. In July 1988, AMC added its first original programming: Classic Stories From Classic Stars (featuring interviews), followed later that year by Star Facts (biographies) and a mini-documentary series Making of a Classic. In 1987, the channel began to be carried on the basic cable tiers of many cable providers. During its early years, it was not uncommon for AMC to host a marathon of Marx Brothers films, or show classics such as the original 1925 release of The Phantom of the Opera. (TCI's Liberty Media division eventually would create another premium service- Encore, which also originally focused on older films, mainly from the 1960s to the 1980s – five years later in April 1991). TCI gained a one-third interest in AMC (but not Bravo, Rainbow's other network) and in exchange made AMC available as an offering for most of its 3.9 million subscribers. To solve this problem, Cablevision and CBS (which became half owner of Rainbow about a year earlier) worked out a deal with the nation's largest cable television provider, Tele-Communications Inc. ![]() By March 1986, it had only 300,000 subscribers. The new movie network struggled to gain carriage. However, he retained the film library and executed his original plan to air the movies on WTBS and later on his new networks Turner Network Television and Turner Classic Movies, a direct competitor to AMC. Turner completed the acquisition of MGM in early 1986, but his ownership was short-lived and he sold it back to the previous owner months later. Rainbow received $50 million and agreed to terminate the licensing deal on December 31, 1985, before which time AMC would not be allowed to convert to a basic service. This led to both companies filing lawsuits against each other in September, and MGM/UA terminating the agreement with Rainbow after alleging that Rainbow had breached it by announcing its intention to offer a premium tier to the AMC cable service. Despite its widespread cable carriage, Turner claimed that because WTBS was a broadcast station, the restriction did not apply. Rainbow claimed it had exclusive basic cable rights to the films for the next five years. Weeks later, Turner announced an agreement to purchase the film studio with the intention of airing the films on his Superstation WTBS. On July 30 of that year, Rainbow had paid $45 million to license up to 800 pre-1950 films from the library. In 1985, Rainbow became involved in a dispute with Ted Turner's Turner Broadcasting System over broadcast rights to the MGM/UA film library. The new network replaced Montage, a channel with a similar format that was being offered to Cablevision subscribers in the New York area. Its original format focused on classic movies – largely those made prior to the 1970s – that aired during the afternoon and early evening hours in a commercial-free, generally unedited, uncut and uncolorized format. History 1984–2002: Focus on classic films Īmerican Movie Classics, as AMC was originally known, debuted on October 1, 1984, as a premium channel by Rainbow Programming Services (a subsidiary of Cablevision). ![]() households with at least one television set). Īs of July 2015, AMC was received by approximately 94,832,000 households in the United States that subscribe to a pay television service (81.5% of U.S. The channel's name originally stood for American Movie Classics, but since 2002 the full name has been de-emphasized as a result of a major shift in its programming. The channel's programming primarily consists of theatrically released films, along with a limited amount of original programming. Philo, YouTube TV, Sling TV, DirecTV StreamĪMC is an American multinational basic cable television channel that is the flagship property of AMC Networks. (downscaled to 480i letterboxed for the SDTV feed) ![]()
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