Someone tell me what the hell happened to AMC..They used to play nothing but the best in classic film. Occasionally, they'd play a real good old scifi or horror flick, and late at night, you could count on some turgid grade-z potboilers and melodrama from the 30's. Now it's like watching TBS. Except TBS is better. They were playing Chain Reaction(1996) the other day. And before that, some tripe from the 80's. What happened to the classics? Even the bad old movies were good. Someone tell me please.
Money money money money money. American Movie Classics--although what they showed was often neither "American" nor "classic" and sometimes barely a "movie"--wasn't bringing in enough bucky. Now AMC ("We do chicken right!"--oh wait, that's KFC) still shows B-grade stuff (usually "Fear Fridays"), but surrounded by commercials and yuck like "Chain Reaction." Did they buy exclusive rights to "Chain Reaction?" Maybe they don't want to make money after all.
AMC went down the drain obviously. They use to be pretty decent but its all because of money and I'm pretty sure the people running it are neo nazis who believe its your American duty to watch commercials (I believe the guy in charge of the channel actually said this once, not kidding either) Forget his name but basically its not even worth turning on now.
they played Short Circuit the other day. didn't realize that was a classic movie till i saw the little logo in the corner
>Did they buy exclusive rights to "Chain Reaction?"
I doubt it, FX was showing it a couple months ago.
>who believe its your American duty to watch commercials (I believe the guy in
>charge of the channel actually said this once, not kidding either)
I recall hearing this, but I forget who said it. I thought maybe it was Ted Turner.
Well, they do need to be profitable. Turning AMC into "HBO Lite" is not (IMOHO) the way to go, but the old way evidently wasn't cutting it. I've seen worse moves at FOX ("Futurama" spiked way up in the ratings last week! Pre-empt it for the next two months!!") and SciFi ("Cancel everything everyone's watching and order more crap like "Crossing Over With The Biggest Douche In The Universe" and "Dream Team!")...
Side notes: "Futurama" is kicking ass over on CartoonNetwork--possibly because they actually PROMOTE it--and SciFi's going to be sorry they ever let MST3K and "Farscape" go. "No, no, we'll be okay--we bought exclusive rights to the "Dragon Fighter" franchise! It's gonna be HUGE!!"
Unrelated joke:
Q: What's the difference between an Oakland Raiders fan and a dressed-for-a-convention Trekkie?
A: The Trekkie gets laid more often.
It boils down to the Almighty Dollar. They figured by running more recent movies and adding the damned commercials every 7 minutes, they'll do better.
WRONG!!
I don't watch AMC anymore....and frankly, I'm really sick and tired of seeing movies like the Indiana Jones films two or three times in a row in a single evening, and 50 damn times during a month. I like the Indy films, for example, but I do NOT want to see them for a very long time because they're on every cable channel a zillion times every week.
AMC truly sucks big hairy testes right now....stick with TCM. They're heads and tails above American Money Crapola.
Anyone wanna bet how long it will be before AMC changes its name to American Movie Channel?
JohnL wrote:
>
> Anyone wanna bet how long it will be before AMC changes its
> name to American Movie Channel?
I still think "American Money Crapola" is a better name. :-)
Yea, they aren't doing as well as before. AMC was really on a role for about 2 years by showing lots of black and white Sci-Fi/Horror films. Now they are becoming like Encore or something.
I understand the whole money thing. But AMC used to be doing what TCM is doing now. TCM seems to be doing fine, and they don't interrupt the movies for commercials. DAMMIT, and I don't get TCM where I live. Oh, the humanity!
"they played Short Circuit the other day. didn't realize that was a classic movie till i saw the little logo in the corner"
Huh? Short Circuit IS a classic, no contest.
Pete
"Hey, Laserlips! Your mama was a snowblower!"
I went to that amcfeedback.com place they keep advertising, and said pretty much the same thing everyone's been saying around here. I figure if they keep running ads saying "Tell us what you think!" then they can't be totally married to the changes. Tell 'em what you think, maybe, just maybe, they'll decide to stop sucking.
I can't believe it was just a couple of years ago that I was shocked they were playing something as recent as Superman: The Movie.
Who are AMC? I live in the UK I dunno what AMC stands for.
....or so they used to be, according to the word "classics" in their name. NOW they just run crap.
Do you have a similar channel in the U.K. that runs British film classics? Always wondered if there was such a channel or station.
This is off-topic the original off-topic, but I hate that Cartoon Network has added Futurama, because it seems like they've gotten rid of Harvey Birdman and Space Ghost Coast to Coast to make room for it.....personally, I have never liked Futurama--it's more for animation geeks than people who just want a funny show with good characters--it's all about stuff in the background and in-jokes. Everything is is just tossed in as an afterthought.
BTW, AMC does totally blow now. It's more like a TNT or a TBS.
Well, everyone's entitled to their opinion, and different strokes for different folks and all that. I find "Futurama" to be just that--a funny, funny show with terrific characters. The background stuff and in-jokes are just gravy.
I can't, however, imagine "Space Ghost" and "Birdman" are permanently gone--maybe on a hold while reshuffling, but surely not gone! They're still popular (although "Futurama"s Cartoon Network ratings just blasted off into the stratosphere) (http://www.gotfuturama.com/). They're still on the Adult Swim (http://www.adultswim.com) list of shows, perhaps they're in rotation now. As more and more shows join the lineup, that's bound to happen.
(The Harvey Bridman "Jailbirdman" game at AdultSwim.com is a howl.)
Don't worry, Cartoon Network shuffles their Adult Swim schedule every few months. Birdman is one of the few AS shows that uses all-new animation for each episode, so it takes longer to make, and it'd get boring if they just played the same 7 episodes over and over. As for Space Ghost, I think it's on hiatus while the creators develop the new shows, but it'll be back.
Here here!
Harvey Birdman, Sealab 2021,Space Ghost, C to C, Futureama, ....humm...ya know...with all the animation out there, why does no one create a Toon network just for adults? Not Porn adult, just the full range of stories that animation is capable of doing , and doing well?
Would seem like a no brainer to me.....
It might be tough to flesh out at this point; most networks start out with reruns of existing shows, and adult cartoons are a relatively new phenomenon (were there any on TV before the Simpsons?). Still, with all the anime out there, it could be done. A few years down the road, I could definitely see it happening (though I might get tired of the Ralph Bakshi marathons after a while. :)
I got no problem with AMC wanting to make money -- don't we all -- but how the hell are they going to do that by showing sh*tty movies with as many or MORE commercials than on the broadcast networks? Are we living in the Bizarro World? ("Viewers hate us! Us must be successful!") Or is some big shadow corporation just looking for a tax write-off? ("Look, we're still making too much money! You gotta p**s off more people so we can start to show a loss!")
That's why the better half and I finally gave in and went to digital cable -- now we have access to TCM (Yummmm!), Sundance, Independent, Trio, Ovation -- you know, INTERESTING stations.
Re: Adult Swim: does anyone know if HOME MOVIES is coming back? We LOVE that show!
>I went to that amcfeedback.com place they keep advertising, and said pretty
>much the same thing everyone's been saying around here. I figure if they keep
>running ads saying "Tell us what you think!" then they can't be totally married to
>the changes. Tell 'em what you think, maybe, just maybe, they'll decide to stop
>sucking.
I tried to send them my comments, but it wouldn't go through.
>Trio,
Do they still have that freaking HUGE bar across the bottom of the screen? Someone posted some vidcaps from a show on Trio and I couldn't believe the size of the black band they put across the bottom. THat makes two channels doing that now, TNN and Trio. How long before the idiot execs at other channel think it's a good idea and start putting a bad across the bottom of the picture?