Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Oh, those Elvis Presley movies

Today being the 40th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death, TCM is using the day in Summer Under the Stars to run a bunch of his movies. Well, a smaller bunch than I would have thought. I'm looking at the TCM schedule, and every single movie during the daytime lineup is followed by a short. All but one of them in prime time are too.

All of the daytime movies would fit into a 105-minute slot, which means you could get eight of them in between the 6:00 AM start of the day and prime time start at 8:00. But instead, there are only seven movies, all put into two-hour slots, with a short to pad out the time. It makes me wonder whether TCM couldn't get the rights to any more Elvis movies. It also doesn't help that there are two concert movies and a documentary sprinkled throughout the day.

Having said that, I notice that primetime tomorrow (Rosalind Russell) day has a short after every feature. There only seems to be one on Rod Taylor day, and that follows a movie listed with a 105-minute runtime. By the time you add the little animation at the beginning, and the announcement of the upcoming movies, you're probably just past 105 minutes and have a good 14 to fill.

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