If you could create your own TV channel dedicated to films..

Matthew the Swordsman

"....what would you show?"

Anything good that I could get my grubby little grabbers on.

Would love to be able to share with people some of the lesser known movies that I have loved in memory and long to be able to see again. Some have turned up on You-tube but it would REALLy be nice to see them on a big screen.

I would show pictures on some sort of "theme" nights with movies that fit together in some way, be it actor, story, location, director, date whatever.
OR
Maybe like it used to be with shorts and cartoons, newsreel, B-movie and feature presentation ?


Nice OP idea. It will be fun to see the ideas that will be flooding in.

Matthew the Swordsman

As a kid, I kept scrapbooks and notebooks with pictures and newspaper and magazine clippings and reviews of the movies I saw. Some of the pictures that were shown together were real "what were these people thinking" type pairings when looked back upon. Some movies are so memorable that the reaction is "Hey, I saw that ?" No notation of the extras were made but I remember there always being a whole bunch of extra "stuff" that had to be sat through before the big pictures.
I need to dig out the books again and take a look at them.

We used to go to a theater in Times Square that showed only newsreels. I must have gone there with my dad as he didn't care for "real" movies and mom didn't like to be on Times Square any longer than she had to be and I doubt she would have gone into a theater there.

Too funny. Bakelite was the very one I was going to say I wanted to see first.
Actually, they all sound pretty see-worthy.


Matthew the Swordsman

Million Dollar Movie

This was my introduction to OLD movies. I never knew they were old. They were just wonderful to watch. I think you would have been a devoted watcher of the program.

"This series began in NYC, on local station WOR TV 9, in 1955, and ran for over a decade. It featured first run movies, where each feature would run for an entire week, airing twice nightly. This format, that simulated the local neighborhood movie house, was also adopted by other local stations, realizing that this was one way to reach the most viewers, considering the competition from the networks. The first 3 features were "Magic Town" staring James Stewart, "Body And SouL" staring John Garfield", and "A Double Life" staring Ronald Coleman. Much of the 1930s and 40s library from RKO were featured. As the station was a subsidiary of "RKO General Tire", many of those films were rental free, to the station. Those RKO films included "King Kong","Gunga Din","Citizen Kane" and the "Fred Astaire"- "Ginger Rogers" RKO musicals. In the summer of 1957, a few of those RKO films such as "King Kong" and "Top Hat" were aired, one time only, on ABC Network TV, on Saturday nights, after which they returned to be rerun on "Million Dollar Movie". Today, those RKO films as well as thousands of others are part of " The Turner Classic Movies" vault."

This is where I first "met" and grew to love Garfield, Bogart, Cagney etc etc etc. Something like this would be great to have on WBAT-TV

Matthew the Swordsman

I'd like to see a TCM for TV. That is, a channel that treats TV programs the way TCM treats movies

Is it worth doing? How would it work?

We've seen some channels do this sort of thing in small ways ever since the old Nick at Nite in the 80s. You also have nostalgia channels like ME. But could a channel aimed for entertainment rather than only nostalgia succeed?

It would be nice to have a place for the best live TV dramas of the '50s

Some nights could be dedicated to variety, sitcoms, westerns, cops and private eyes, documentaries, shows, etc.

And maybe behind the scenes documentaries, on things like the Warners TV factory, the rise and fall of the TV western, the Golden Age of comedy-variety, and so on.

Perhaps this channel could break away from the template of stripping/one rerun per weekday as you show every single episode of the series.
Let's say you're showing a series that ran for one season and produced 30 episodes. 10 of these episodes are very good. You can show those episodes as part of a block with other, similar programs.would not air programs in the standard strip 5 format. Instead it would, say, have a westerns night and show a Gunsmoke, a Have Gun Will Travel, a Rawhide, and a Wagon Train. The next night could be sketch comedy with Your Show Of Shows, Steve Allen, Ernie Kovacs, etc...

This idea has been rattling around my brain since the '80s, when I read in TV Guide that the CBC had an all night show where a guy played a CBC night watchman and would play stuff from the CBC archives (anybody remember that show?). The TVG article claimed that a US network (NBC I think) was considering doing the same sort of show.

I was so excited, thinking of all the great NBC stuff that would become available. Of course, that never happened... But ever since I've thought about how it might be done on cable.

Richard Kimble

I love the idea of the TV channel with the old anthology series shows. You would, of course, have access to the original copies of the ones that were taped over to save money, right ?

I'm thinking that you know about the Decades Channel. I liked their earlier format where the theme was some event for that day. This whole weekend devoted to one program, even when it's a program I like, not so much. Two whole days of The Love Boat. AGGGGGGGGH!

I would like a mix of show genres on a particular night. Having all one genre might get to be too much sameness.

teleadm

Money no object. No Commercials. Variety ! = HEAVEN