Yesterday morning, a new movie network appeared over-the-air as a sub-channel to Fox-owned stations across the US. It's called "MOVIES!", and it's on the air 24 hours a day. My wife stumbled across it this evening just as Mel Brooks' High Anxiety started. The next movie on? Silent Movie. This sounds terrific, but I've a few caveats before you start thinking it's the best thing ever. The good news is that I find it's a great addition to the wide-open sub-channel space, and is bound to improve over time in areas where it's lacking at launch.
From the Blu-ray of An Affair to Remember
MOVIES! is SD-only, and there are some really gross picture artifacting issues that arise regularly. When Mel Brooks runs from pidgeons in High Anxiety, everything goes all blocky. This isn't a result of reception issues, but rather, broadcast signal strength.
It's "free" over-the-air broadcasting, but some boosted signal will improve the likelihood that people will stick with it. I don't expect that most are massive picture quality obsessives like me, but crap looks like crap looks like crap.
The channel is commercial-supported, but thankfully, the ads are not so frequent nor lengthy that they defeat my interest in watching a movie on TV that I have in much higher quality on the shelf. The feeling of the program flow is like the old days of weekend afternoon movies, which I like very much. This is in part thanks to ads like the ones for new-fangled catheters (hosted by Chuck Woolery) or AAG insurance (hosted by a goateed Senator Fred Thompson).
The programming is pretty diverse, with a regular patch of westerns and/or detective stories around the middle of the day. Each evening looks like a double feature followed by an encore of said pairing, with a late-night movie after. Tonight's is Anastasia and An Affair to Remember. The next day is The Star Chamber (starring Michael Douglas, and just out on Blu-ray) and The Sicilian Clan with Alain Delon. Others coming up over the next week include Capone (1975) and Roger Corman's The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, and a Mansfield to Day/Hudson double bill in The Girl Can't Help It and Do Not Disturb.
Then on June 1, something goofy happens. They start doing some syndicated TV crap from 10am-1pm, with movies the rest of the day. Most people including myself are working at that time anyway, but it's odd. The calendar only goes through June 2nd, so who knows what they plan after that point.
What is on there reflects some actual programming acumen, rather than throwing darts at DVDs tacked on a wall.
On the business side of things, the channel is run by the people of Weigel Broadcasting out of Illinois, who added dedicated MOVIES! execs earlier in May. The channel exists thanks to a deal with owned and operated Fox Television Stations. The content pool they're drawing from includes the entire 20th Century Fox back catalog. If the channel is successful, it could expand to more markets where Fox owns and operates affiliates. I would speculate it would also be offered to non-O&O Fox stations at some point, too.
In a media landscape full of expectations and prognostications about TV apps, omnivorous mega-boxes, and "smart" TV, something like MOVIES! might seem quaint or out of place, but I think it is quite the opposite. Whether something like this translates to the theoretical "TV app" future sooner or later, I think it's inevitable. The owners of these massive content libraries are smart to start using them to bring in revenue by actually getting the content dusted off and out of the vaults. That isn't to say that content deals with Netflix and Hulu are dead, but this is a good example of content owners leveraging the considerable arsenals they have under much more direct self-control, but with a layer of generic, unfettered branding.
I know at a glance that all the movies are Fox, but the un-branded naming of MOVIES! coupled with varied types of content prevent a reflexive reaction to whatever the word "Fox" means to anyone. I'll be interested to see what's on after next week.