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Bye-bye IFC

Jade Jaguar

Jade Jaguar

Regular
I've loved The Independent Film Channel for years now. It presented arthouse movies, short independent films and animation. It had been going down hill lately, showing lots of series comedies, and other series. But, now they have added ads, and have constant commercial breaks in their films. I don't like ads, but I could tolerate them, if they were NOT interrupting movies. I won't even watch them on the DVR that way. I feel like my dog got hit by a truck. :mad:
 
The IFC is owned by Rainbow Media, the same jerks who turned AMC into a commercial channel. They also own The Sundance Channel. Sundance has added a lot of series, less movies, so I guess commercials will be coming soon there too.

Yeah, it's kind of ironic that their attempts to make more money may ultimately move more people to get the stuff illegally, for free. I can see adding commercials between films, but as long as we still have options to see films uninterrupted, why watch that crap?

Another thing on the horizon is that the studios who own the films and TV shows, like Sony, are talking about charging Netflix 10 times as much for streaming rights on the next contract.
 
At the cost of the loss of uninterrupted classic films. To me, it wasn't worth it. Many cable channels make lots of series', that many find "awesome." I'll admit that I might check out ONN, the Onion News Network, but that's all I am likely to watch on the IFC. If they had just added commercials between the programs, I'd shrug, and still be an avid viewer.
 
Ok but really, if you wanna see an uninterrupted classic film, it's so easy w/ internet/libraries/DVD.

Last weekend I was holed up @ home due to a cold and crappy winter weather, so I decided to catch up on some movie watching I been meaning to get to as I haven't watched any in a while.

- Marty, a 1954 Ernest Borgnine film referenced in a small indy comedy starring Jeff Greene and I saw a while back.

- The Wild Bunch, 196something, because I read a thing about Sam Peckinpah and realized I hadn't seen it in like a 15 yrs and don't remember it.

- Tron, 1981-ish, in anticipation of the sequel

- Inception, 2010, not even out on DVD yet.

All acquired immediately, in excellent quality, unedited, uncensored. It never even occurred to me to look at IFC or AMC.

This is, increasingly, the reality of the market.
 
You pay to get that channel, it's part of what you pay for your satellite/cable tv service. If you pay more, you get better channels, and many more of them (we tend to have "basic" cable, "extended basic" and then all sorts of packages that you can add like five HBO channels, Showtime channels, etc.

The bottom line for having good movie channels: you will miss many great movies you'd never have a chance to hear about by word-of-mouth.

Although I am less annoyed about the commercial options, I live where there are much mroe limited choices. I just can't believe what has happened to "specialty" channels. I mean, they've all cheapened their formats and kind of lost the reason I wanted to see them in the first place.

Am I remembering correctly when I recall that in college, Bravo was a great channel on which to watch foreign films? And filmed plays, like "Master Harold and the Boys" and "Sizwe Banzi is Dead"? (These were anti-apartheid British plays.)

I noticed our cable company added Bravo, and I checked it out last summer.
It's all reruns, now.
 
Yeah I think Bravo became the all-gay channel at some point. I don't mean challenging indy films about homosexuals and their life experiences, I mean TV shows where they go shopping and eat lunch or whatever.
 
Sindatur said:
Ah, I didn't realize IFC was a Pay Channel.
Click to expand...

It ain't. Comes w/ cable. I don't pay extra for it.

Jade's complaint isn't that they're going to show commercials at all, but show them during movies. The original point of channels like IFC, AMC and TCM were unedited, unre-formatted movies, basically like watching the DVD.
 
So, if it's just cable, then how did they support themselves?

Cable companies charge you to carry your station, you have to pay your employees and pay for your content... How does a station without commercials support themselves other than the PBS model with Pledge drives and Government proceeds?

AMC and TCM never had pledge drives. I too find it irritating that AMC shows commercials now, but, they don't play classic movies anymore either, aside Westerns on the weekends.

Walking Dead was pretty awesome for it's first season, though :D
 
GKarsEye said:
Yeah I think Bravo became the all-gay channel at some point. I don't mean challenging indy films about homosexuals and their life experiences, I mean TV shows where they go shopping and eat lunch or whatever.
Click to expand...

Sindatur said:
Ah, I didn't realize IFC was a Pay Channel.
Click to expand...

GKarsEye said:
Sindatur said:
Ah, I didn't realize IFC was a Pay Channel.
Click to expand...

It ain't. Comes w/ cable. I don't pay extra for it.

Jade's complaint isn't that they're going to show commercials at all, but show them during movies. The original point of channels like IFC, AMC and TCM were unedited, unre-formatted movies, basically like watching the DVD.
Click to expand...

hypatia said:
:rommie:

Exactly.
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How embarrassing: I didn't check to see there were posts on the next page. :eek:

I meant my comment to go in after the "all shopping" comment GKE made on the previous page.

Sorry, yes, I meant you pay to get cable tv, that comes with basic service. You then pay more if you want more, like commercial-free programming.

How TCM survives as basic cable, but with no commercials? I think they own the Warner Brothers library, don't they? That probably sustains them. TCM is a way to create more interest in the movies they profit from selling, I suspect.
 
Sindatur said:
So, if it's just cable, then how did they support themselves?

Cable companies charge you to carry your station, you have to pay your employees and pay for your content... How does a station without commercials support themselves other than the PBS model with Pledge drives and Government proceeds?
Click to expand...
IFC wasn't showing commercials during the movie but they still had sponsors. Usually you would have trailers with an attached ad, e.g. "Target presents..." and a commercial right before the programming: "tonight's movie brought to you by Acura, watch this 2 minute presentation."
 
Sindatur said:
So, if it's just cable, then how did they support themselves?

Cable companies charge you to carry your station, you have to pay your employees and pay for your content... How does a station without commercials support themselves other than the PBS model with Pledge drives and Government proceeds?
Click to expand...

Channels like IFC and TCM, which aren't basic channels, but aren't "premium " channels that you pay an individual set fee for, get paid by the cable, or satellite, company, on a per-viewer basis. Of course, the money they get comes from what you pay your service provider.

TCM no longer owns Turner's film library, which includes WB films. They have to pay for every film they run. But, I'd guess that the negotiations with the Turner film library are easier, and cheaper, than with other sources.

GKE, yes, I know, losing the IFC hardly makes it difficult to have good things to see. I don't have a computer, or ISP at home, so I can't stream. But, I do have free access to a library of well over 40,000 DVDs, where I work. Besides that, I have lots of DVDs I've burned myself, and haven't had time to watch yet. But, the IFC, and Sundance, both showed films I hadn't heard of, that I checked out, and found to be quite good. They weren't just a source of programming, but a source of knowledge of what films there were, in their favored genres.

Oh, I have read that Inception holds the new record for bluray sales v DVD sales, so I guess it's out!
 
So is the Fox Movie Channel about the only main channel that basically is just showing it's own movies?

Speaking of Fox, has anyone else noticed that they really like to talk about how great Fox Studios is?
 
Fox also owns films from other studios, from some years. I know they own some MGM films, and I think they own some Universal films, just to name a couple of studios. As to what separate Fox entities might be involved in the leasing and showing, I'm not sure. But, probably FMC and the part of Fox that owns the film rights, are separate legal entities, so, at least on paper, some money changes hands, or accounts, something like that.
 
hypatia said:
So is the Fox Movie Channel about the only main channel that basically is just showing it's own movies?

Speaking of Fox, has anyone else noticed that they really like to talk about how great Fox Studios is?
Click to expand...


There's also MGM HD, Universal HD, EPIX HD (Paramount), Sony HD to name a few.
 
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