I don’t really agree with the article. TCM was a wonderful thing as it was conceived but the times have changed a lot since then.
Its main viewership is dying. Not to overuse the word “literally,” but, literally dying.
Live cable is basically the worst way to watch a movie I you can imagine at this point. I love all the kind words about curation but hello have you ever heard of the Internet? There is no shortage of sources of movie curation all better than anything a mass-market cable channel can offer.
I think ultimately TCM needs to be reallocated into something that fits live cable better, possibly not even related to movies. Longer term, I don’t think most cable stations will exist at all. They will be content portals for the various media conglomerates like we see on streaming sites. I think that cable service as we understand it now will essentially be shut down. Just look at the free “cable” services out there like Pluto. They’re all pseudo-channels pieced together with a grab bag of content.
I’ve also got a bit of an unpopular opinion here: the Max rebrand makes a ton of sense. Why? Because the “HBO” Brand is associated with adult shows, i.e., R-rated content. This is a problem. Did you know Max is the streaming home of Sesame Street? Yeah, that used to have the HBO brand on it.
HBO Max got to the point where most of its content isn’t even from HBO. Making the streaming service a separate brand from the content sources makes perfect sense.
Hacker Cinema
1 comment on Hacker News
I don’t really agree with the article. TCM was a wonderful thing as it was conceived but the times have changed a lot since then.
Its main viewership is dying. Not to overuse the word “literally,” but, literally dying.
Live cable is basically the worst way to watch a movie I you can imagine at this point. I love all the kind words about curation but hello have you ever heard of the Internet? There is no shortage of sources of movie curation all better than anything a mass-market cable channel can offer.
I think ultimately TCM needs to be reallocated into something that fits live cable better, possibly not even related to movies. Longer term, I don’t think most cable stations will exist at all. They will be content portals for the various media conglomerates like we see on streaming sites. I think that cable service as we understand it now will essentially be shut down. Just look at the free “cable” services out there like Pluto. They’re all pseudo-channels pieced together with a grab bag of content.
I’ve also got a bit of an unpopular opinion here: the Max rebrand makes a ton of sense. Why? Because the “HBO” Brand is associated with adult shows, i.e., R-rated content. This is a problem. Did you know Max is the streaming home of Sesame Street? Yeah, that used to have the HBO brand on it.
HBO Max got to the point where most of its content isn’t even from HBO. Making the streaming service a separate brand from the content sources makes perfect sense.