BMcKee

I don't know about "Lucky Viewer Decides", but the other ideas sound really good. I particularly like "Music in the Movies". Say one night a month focused on movies with themes and sound tracks by a specific composer - Korngold, or Bernard Hermann - with the introduction or maybe some discussion from a modern film composer (Danny Elfman as an example) or conductor (like James Levine).

I had the same problem on Sunday in Saskatoon. I don't know enough about the way Shaw is handling the signal to guess whether the cause is at their end or whether it is a problem with the link to the satellite. Puzzling. On the other hand I've been around long enough to have seen it happen before on other analog channels (and blackouts seem to happen a lot on my digital channels, particularly in the summer). As for not seeing older movies on regular TV channels, blame the combination of people like my brother who don't think that there was ever a movie worth seeing made before Star Wars, people who refuse to watch anything that's in Black & White, and TV programmers who decided long ago that showing infomercials from midnight to the start of the morning shows was better than showing classic movies. And while we're at it, how about a little praise for those programmers - like the ones at the CBC - who buck conventional wisdom and show movies after the late news. There aren't enough of them but we should appreciate them.

I'm really happy that TCM is making the effort to give viewers something worth seeing when they don't have rights to a particular film in Canada. Too many channels would resort to blacking out a program, and even though substitutions can at times seem a bit arbitrary it will probably take a very long time for it to go beyond mildly irritating.

> I'm gonna keep on > getting my American fed however cuz I just know there > will be issues with "Canadian content" which will > annoy me to no end. I hate the CRTC! There haven't been any overt Canadian Content issues so far, at least in terms of putting Canadian programming on the channel. This is very much a case like Speed, or the Golf Channel, and in fact TCM was licensed at the same time as those (1997 I think). What has been bothering me a bit is that there has been some substitution of alternate movies. The biggest reason seems to be conflicting rights but there are some other substitutions I noted in my original post which don't make sense to me. The CRTC has nothing to do with any of this however. Message was edited by: BMcKee

Hi Larry I'm in Saskatoon, and TCM is in the former HGTV slot in the Tier 3 Analog section here. As I understand it, it is on Channel 42 in Calgary. Brent

My cable provider, Shaw Cable, has become the first Canadian cable company to add TCM to it's line up. It showed up on my TV on Thursday. HOORAY! There is a problem, part of which I think I understand. On most days there's one or more movies shown in Canada are different from the movies shown in the United States. Most of this I understand to be a result of rights for some movies being owned (for now) by Canadian stations. It happens with other stations as well and at least TCM puts in a replacement film, usually one which fits the theme - These Three was replaced with Stars in My Crown. Unfortunately there are a couple of situations which don't obviously fit into this "conflicting rights" situation. The Friday night foreign films, like Kameradschaft, aren't available. Neither are silent movies not shown on Sunday night time. I won't be able to see The Adventures of Pince Achmed or the 1923 Hunchback of Notre Dame. BOO! I'm not posting this with the expectation of any action, just to vent. And for the record I love the channel, substitutions and all.