Fedya

I think the writer is referring to the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, which had substantial backing from Disney who presumably wanted it passed before Steamboat Willie would enter the public domain. (At the time, it was scheduled to fall out of copyright in 2003, but the CTEA changed that so that it won't fall out of copyright until 2048. Unless, of course, Disney get the copyright terms extended again.) My Florida friends tell me that Disney do get some exemptions in Florida law for certain laws that have an exemption for fireworks manufacturers: Disney World is the only one in the state.

The National Association of Broadcasters (the over the air channels) aren't saints either by a long shot. In the Virginia Postrel article I posted several pages back one of the interesting struggles in the 90s was the "must carry" rules by which the cable operators had to carry OTA channels. They hated this -- until they realized that they had something the satellite providers didn't have, and tried to bar the satellite providers from carrying OTA channels. When that didn't stop the losing of customers to satellite, they did a volte-face and tried to force the satellite operators to carry the OTA channels too on the thinking that the satellite providers would have to drop other channels for lack of bandwidth. The "must carry" rules have been loosened significantly, and as I understand it, cable and satellite providers are certainly under no obligation to carry the digital subchannels.

Just because you don't need those channels doesn't mean nobody else does. I'm sure a lot of people think things were fine before TCM came around.

Not that the customers are unalloyed good guys either. I always see a lot people in discussions about cable channels vs. cable providers and content whose attitude boils down to, "They have a big pile of money, and dammit, that's just not fair!" (Specifically, I'm thinking of the people I saw call for the government to force the NFL to break its contract with DirecTV over the Sunday Ticket because Feelings or something. To hell with contract law.) Heck, it's the attitude behind a whole lot of "consumer" reporting.

I wish the **** politicians had to adhere to the do-not-call registry, too.

Which is why Dish viewers are also losing those other channels too. There's also the thing that the channels are sold as a sort of bundle too, in that to get the big channels they have to carry the lesser-interest channels from the same network, with haggling over which tier the channel can be put in. There's also this old, but very interesting article on the way in which pretty much everybody in the TV business is a bad guy. (Who remembers how the cable providers used to try to use the law to bar DirecTV and Dish from offering over-the-air channels?)

You just have to find out when Arthur is going to be there, and shoplift in front of him so he'll pay for the items you took.

The documentary was from 2004 or 2005 (Ann Savage has since died, of course). So that's Schallert only 40 years after the Patty Duke Show. But Schallert is in fact still alive at 92. I thought he'd died in the last couple of years myself.

Correct. First they came for the VH1 viewers, but I said nothing because I don't watch VH1. Until TCM is one of the channels that can't survive. In a cable world with a lot fewer niche (or at least they were originally conceived as niche) channels, how many providers are going to be happy about a channel like TCM that doesn't have outside commercials?

I suggest they watch nice early 20th century movies like Hot Saturday, coming up this Sunday on TCM.

It does seem as though only the movies airing in the evening theme hours (ie. 8:00 PM to 6:00 AM) get their trailers shown, not movies running during the daytime. Beyond that I've never noticed any pattern.

Some, but by no means all, trailers get shown. I don't know how TCM decides which films' trailers they're going to show and which they aren't. I'd have guessed that MGM/WB/RKO movies would be more likely to have the trailers show up, but I've seen more than enough trailers for movies from other studios to conclude that there's no pattern. And I think the Dr. Strangleove trailer has been shown for earlier airings.

Happy Thanksgiving to all our Canadian posters! May they enjoy their Kraft Dinner and poutine before they sit down on their chesterfields to watch an evening of Curling for Toonies.

I'd like to see them not do anything on MLK Day, just to watch people have an apoplectic fit. (By the same token, I'd like to see some large organization announce that they're going to use October to raise awareness of a disease other than breast cancer.)

Everything TCM does bothers you, it seems. Edit: Since I wrote the above, I got a PM from TopBilled implying that if I didn't edit it, he'd report me to the moderator. To put what I wrote above another way, I get the distinct impression from reading TopBilled's posts that he has very clear ideas on how TCM should be programmed, and woe betide TCM if they don't program the channel exactly that way.

Don't confuse him with logic.

I have the monthly schedules going back to July 2007 on my hard drive, so I decided to look up when Dead Ringer has aired. The search yielded 18 results (not counting the possibility of being run twice in the same month): Nov 2007 Jun 2008 Aug 2008 Jul 2009 Jun 2010 Oct 2010 Apr 2011 Oct 2011 Jan 2012 Mar 2012 Aug 2012 Dec 2012 Mar 2013 May 2013 Jun 2013 Jul 2013 Oct 2013 Aug 2014 SO there were quite a few airings in 2013, but other than that, I don't think it's been run ridiculously often.

Damnation Alley is one of those movies that's bad, but a hell of a lot of fun.

TCM got the rights to the Connery Bonds for one month when he was Star of the Month a few years back.

I believe this Thursday's airing of Three on a Couch is going to be preempted for Canadian viewers, who will get Three on a Chesterfield instead. [ducking]

Probably the same idiot who thought Margaret O'Brien wasn't irritating.

Perhaps you drank a little too much of Tom's beer, James?

I think Lorna was conflating The House on 56th Street and The House on 92nd Street, which are close in title but not much else. Well, they're both worth seeing too.

I'd rather have a bunch of Ben Franklins in my wallet than a bunch of Ben Mankiewiczes.

Those stars need to stop dropping dead and titing us out.