Sunday, January 1, 2012

The end of the Fox Movie Channel

Well, not quite, but I don't think it's unsafe to say the end is near. Three months ago, the folks at Fox who run the Fox Movie Channel decided they were going to "rebrand" the channel effective January 1, 2012. According to the press release,


The new FXM block will air contemporary movies with limited commercials from 3 p.m.-3 a.m. daily, while maintaining its current commercial-free format of classic films from 3 a.m.-3 p.m.

Pardon me if I roll my eyes at that use of the term "limited". I'm reminded of one of the Simpsons episodes, where Marge makes a comment to the effect that "they turned Fox into a soft core porn channel so gradually I hardly even noticed". As with IFC a year ago, these things start off slowly, but within six months, the identity of the channel is totally changed, and we'll have a Fox version of AMC, which has mostly recent movies -- when they have movies. The rest of the time it's commercials and crap like Mad Men. (Yes, I'm aware I'm one of the few who doesn't like Mad Men, but I think I've mentioned quite a few times how I don't care for the constant revisionist rehashing of the 1960s.)


Besides, from what I can tell (it took a long time before FMC's website updated the schedule for January 1 and beyond), the movies airing in the "classic" block are rather less classic than before. I'd presume the FXM block films are going to be edited for content as well.


So enjoy the rest of the Fox Movie Channel while you can; it's probably not going to be around much longer.

2 comments:

Richard Shelter said...

After watching a couple of titles on the new FXM, I figured out what they're doing:
They're using their broadcast prints with the original fade out/in of the old commercial breaks, just using less of them. (I guess that's their idea of giving us less commercials.) Jeez, they can't even use fresh versions of these films? Really? They're letterbox, but they're censored & edited versions...
This completely seems like a 'bean-counter' move; just a low-cost way of re-presenting their library...amazing & disheartening...

Unknown said...

Fx can say shit in one of their shows like Rescue Me, or Nip Tuck, or Archer, but not in a motion picture.