CALGARY – Shaw Communications became the first BDU in Canada to add Turner Classic Movies to its channel lineup, both on Shaw Cable and Star Choice.
TCM has actually been on the eligible satellite list for about eight years but because of movie copyright ownership issues, Canadian cable and satellite companies have been reluctant to carry a channel which would then need to be blacked out often.
However, executive vice-president Tom Karsch told www.cartt.ca in an interview on Tuesday that the channel has been working on new deals to gain the North American rights to its classic movies (primarily from the 1930s, 40s and 50s, but it does air some more recent flicks).
“There will be some blackouts,” he said, “but we’ve been working to ensure we have the rights for up there.”
The channel actually had to swap Cowboy for Adam’s Rib today – launch day on Shaw and Star Choice – because it didn’t have a deal for the Canadian rights to Cowboy finished yet, added Karsch.
“We’re working towards no blackouts,” he added. Blackouts are also not what they used to be as the channel will not offer up a blank screen, but an alternate movie.
TCM has set its sights on other Canadian BDUs, too. “We were negotiating with Rogers and Shaw and Shaw just pulled the trigger first,” Karsch said. “Our intent and hope is to make is available to all Canadian cable and satellite subscribers."
And, with the channel available on Star Choice, it could easily be distributed to small cable systems across the country who rely on Star Choice’s SRDU division, Cancom, for distant signals. In fact, www.cartt.ca has been told, the Canadian Cable Systems Alliance has begun talking with Turner about distribution to its member systems.
The interesting aspect to Shaw’s move with Turner Classic Movies is that it added the channel to tier III, the last analog tier which was created in 1997. The cable industry has long claimed that what with high speed Internet growth and HDTV, analog space on its networks is precious and it has little room for anything else. So this new video addition (an American one at that) to the largest subscription TV company in the country will likely come under some scrutiny from Canadian broadcasters, many of whom would like Shaw to add their digital specialties to the company’s digital cable and DTH lineup.
"This is the most significant addition to our Full Cable Service lineup since the launch of the third tier in 1997," said Peter Bissonnette, president of Shaw Communications Inc., in the press release. "We know TCM will be an instant hit with our customers and enhance the value of their cable services.”
Customers will get a free preview until January 1st.
Turner Classic Movies, currently seen in more than 72 million homes in the U.S., is a 24-hour cable network from Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., a Time Warner company. TCM presents “the greatest motion pictures of all time from the largest film library in the world,” it says (the old MGM library, which Ted Turner famously purchased and set about to colorize in the 1986 is TCM’s key, although it shows movies from many other studios, too).
