renethefish

Somebody must occasionally read this stuff - I've had one reply, of sorts, to the same issue I've posted about 3 times. As an Australian subscriber to what is called TCM here but appears to be about two weeks worth of very random programming constantly repeated*. They gave me an e-mail address of someone at the TCM organisation (I don't know if it was the "programmer" for TCM, the janitor or perhaps he was both). He never replied to my e-mail. So, the short answer is" yes, someone at least skims the material. Whether there is any practical outcome resulting, who knows? (*)After a year of watching TCM Lite, there have been no screenings of any of the following famous films from their library: The Asphalt Jungle; Flying Down to Rio; Out of the Past; Murder, My Sweet; any silent movies (except for Buster Keaton's The Cameraman which is playing as I write); almost ANYTHING from RKO or many hundreds of other wonderful films that they own. On the other hand, we've had many screenings of rubbish - interminable screenings of Man from UNCLE "movies" (cobbled together form old TV shows); The Extraordinary Seaman (of which Maltin's guide says:"Bomb. ... highlights: old newsreel footage and Fay Dunaway's eye makeup); War of the Planets and another film by the same director whose title I forget.Night of the Lepus (about giant rabbits). The Ice Pirates. Innumerable MGM comedies, etc from the 60's and 70's, hardly MGM's glory period. And too many to remember or mention. I've seen discussion here about a hypothetical 2nd TCM, perhaps devoted to B-movies.Sounds great but here in the boonies we'd be ecstatic if we just had one decent classics station.

Somebody must occasionally read this stuff - I've had one reply, of sorts, to the same issue I've posted about 3 times. As an Australian subscriber to what is called TCM here but appears to be about two weeks worth of veryrandom programming constantly repeated*. They gave me an e-mail address of someone at the TCM organisation (I don't know if it was the "programmer" for TCM, the janitor or perhaps he was both). He never replied to my e-mail. So, the short answer is" yes, someone at least skims the material. Whether there is any practical outcome resulting, who knows? (*)After a year of watching TCM Lite, there have been no screenings of any of the following famous films from their library: The Asphalt Jungle; Flying Down to Rio; Out of the Past; Murder, My Sweet; any silent movies (except for Buster Keaton's The Cameraman which is playing as I write); almost ANYTHINGfrom RKO or many hundreds of other wonderful films that they own. On the other hand, we've had many screenings of rubbish - interminable screenings of Man from UNCLE "movies" (cobbled together form old TV shows); The Extraordinary Seaman (of which Maltin's guide says:"Bomb. ... highlights: old newsreel footage and Fay Dunaway's eye makeup); War of the Planets and another film by trhe same director whose title I forget.Night of the Lepus (about giant rabbits). The Ice Pirates. Innumerable MGM comedies, etc from the 60's and 70's, hardly MGM's glory period. And too many to remember or mention. I've seen discussion here about a hypothetical 2nd TCM, perhaps devoted to B-movies.Sounds great but here in the boonies we'd be ecstatic if we just had onedecent classics station.

A message in a bottle addressed to the hidden gnome/s who control the programming of TCM in Australia/New Zealand (which does not have its own webpage otherwise I'm sure they would have heard from other exasperated viewers): PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE!!! On Behalf of all Antipodean viewers and anyone else who gets the same service, PLEASE screen some new material. The repetition has gotten unbearable. The same movies, over and over. The situation with shorts is even (much) worse. Over and over and over. Instead of the same Pete Smith, Joe McDoaks and Robert Benchley how about, for example, screening some of the Crime Does Not pay shorts? As if the repetition of the same limited repertoire wasn't bad enough, the quality of many of the films shown are extremely poor. I don't believe that anyone in the world really wants to watch films like Wild, Wild Planet (despite its cool title) or War of the Planets, not once they've seen a few minutes of them, anyway. Now, if the local TCM screened as many movies in a month as TCM America does, that wouldn't be a problem but where all films are screened three times over a 24 hour period and then probably repeated two to four times over the next couple of months then it's just an act of contempt towards the viewers. As if there wasn't already enough evidence of the contempt held for the viewers just in the slapdash programming, whoever administers the local version of TCM (presumably a subsidiary of Time/Warners/Turner etc.)shows its contempt for the "product" by emblazoning the TCM logo permanently in the top right hand corner of the screen, often obscuring facial features of onscreen actors. Although obtrusive station id's ("bugs") are normal in Australia I don't know why TCM has to have the most obnoxious placement (in common with presumed stablemates The Cartoon Network and Discovery). Everything about the parent TCM shines with the enthusiasm and love that somebody, at least, must feel there regarding film and particularly classic Hollywood film - the website, the programming, etc. The local TCM is just a contemptuous exploitation of the TCM brandname and does nothing for TCM's reputation. In fact, I strongly believe that TCM's reputation has been greatly tarnished, perhaps irrevocably. In Australia, the classic movie buff has only one place to turn to when it come to television and that is Bill Collins's Golden Years of Hollywood at Fox Classics. Even though Mr Collins has been reduced to screening just 8 movies over the weekends he his program is a much better source of classic Hollywood films than the local TCM - he shows a far greater variety of films and the films are of much higher quality than the random selection that TCM shows. For fans of film noir such as myself, Mr Collins is still the best resource, hand picking films from different studios. In the past twelve months he has shown many film noir classics from different studios. TCM has shown (mostly repeated)a handful of MGM noirs, a sprinkle of Warner Bros and two from RKO. Films that TCM own outright that they haven't screened in the year that I have been a subscriber include: The Asphalt Jungle; Beyond the Forest; Caught; Cause for Alarm; Conflict; Danger Signal;Dark Passage; Force of Evil; Fury; High Sierra; I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang; Lady in the Lake; Nobody Lives Forever; Nora Prentiss; The People Against O'Hara; Point Blank; Scene of the Crime; Side Street; The Strip; Undercurrent; except for While the City Sleeps and Cry Danger, none of the many, many great RKO noirs have been screened. That includes Out of the Past and other Robert Mitchum classics, even though Out of the Past and Mitchum get used a lot for promotional purposes, as does Murder My Sweet, another RKO film and film noir in general. If it wasn't for Bill Collins and the Golden Years of Hollywood I'd give up my subscription and use the money to buy DVD's from the US. TCM in Australia is barely worth viewing after about 3 to 4 months. I'll summarise my complaints: 1. More variety. Please. 2. Quality control, particularly if the quantity of films available continues to be severely restricted. 3. Either remove (not likely, I know) or at least move the TCM logo to a more sensible place. 4. A webpage would be nice. Or some way of providing feedback. If all this is too much work for whoever is in charge of programming I'm more than happy to offer my services. Please treat your Antipodean viewers with a modicum of the respect that US viewers take for granted. Thank you.

> I'm sorry to hear about the inferior programming on > international TCM stations. Perhaps, in fact I'm > sure, they are not run by the CM people here in the > United States and the work is contracted out (i.e. > others are making the programming decisions, not the > CM people from the U.S.) You might think about > sending e-mails and letters (if you haven't and you > have the time) to Turner people on both sides of the > planet. Maybe they'll do something. Good Luck! Thanks. The folks who run TCM's webpage gave me an e-mail address for someone who "would be able to answer any questions about TCM in Australia" but I haven't received any reply from my message of a fortnight ago, as yet. I could see why they might have economic reasons or just reasons of expediency to show a limited range of films; it may be simply that because other Aussie channels have such a narrow selection they see no point in bucking the trend. Why give the rubes anymore than you really hafta? But I cannot understand about the placement of a permanent station i.d. in the top right hand corner - it just seems like deliberate vandalism. I can't tell you how shocked and disappointed I was when I first had subscriber tv connected and saw that dirty bloody thing on the screen like a spider attacking Robert Taylor's face (and man, we get to see a LOT of Robert Taylor's face). If I had known, I seriously doubt I would have it connected as TCM is the main reason that I was initially interested in subscribing - the legendary library, beautifully restored films, etc. A year later those bugs are still really bugging me.

As TCM Australasia does not have its own web-site I am posting these questions here in the hope that someone from Turner International can answer them for me: Firstly - what is the deal with the station ID being permanently emblazoned in the top right-hand corner of the screen, often obscuring the faces of actors. The only more obtrusive place would be in the centre of the screen. I can't believe that any organisation that professes to love movies so much can indulge in such disrespectful behaviour. Secondly - why do we get pretty near exclusively the pan & scan versions of movies? Pan & scan sucks & should only be shown as a last resort. (Pardon the asterisks - I had no idea that anybody in the world considered that word offensive. Let me re-phrase with out using the "S" word. Pan & scan imitates the action of somebody trying to syphon petrol) Thirdly - is there a hope that your non-American subscribers (particularly Australasian subscribers) will ever get something approximating the service that Americans receive? Although TCM's publicity (including the local variant's)trumpets the huge library it has at hand, here we get the same 100-200 movies recycled constantly, and a much, much smaller number of shorts, also constantly re-cycled. As a big film noir fan I'm very disappointed that the RKO library has been almost completely ignored. In the 12 months I've been a subscriber the local TCM has shown a mere handful of RKO films, only one being a noir. Is there any hope for us fans of classic Hollywood movies who don't live in the US?