Movie Central - History

History

In 1982, the CRTC licensed Canada's first national pay television services. The commission licensed one national general-interest service – First Choice – as well as a number of short-lived niche channels, and several regional general-interest channels.

Allarcom Pay Television, owned by Charles Allard, was initially granted the regional concession for Alberta. However, by the time Allarcom's service, Superchannel, launched on February 1, 1983, Allarcom had apparently also gained control of a second regional channel, Ontario Independent Pay Television.

By January 1984, Superchannel had received approval to extend its signal to Saskatchewan (replacing Teletheatre, a province-wide pay-cable network that had been operating since the late 1970s), Manitoba, and what is now the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. Allarcom also took control of Aim Satellite Broadcasting (British Columbia and Yukon) and provided the Superchannel signal in those markets on an "interim" basis while Aim could establish its own service.

By the spring of 1984, it became clear that the remaining pay operators were continuing to post substantial losses. In August, AIM and OIPT were merged into Allarcom's operations, and the resulting channel exited the Ontario market. Meanwhile, the formerly national service First Choice agreed to serve only Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada. As part of their agreement, Allarcom and First Choice agreed to jointly market their services under the name First Choice Superchannel, in which the Superchannel "star" branding was predominant. This practice continued until 1989, at which point the "First Choice" name remained in the east and "Superchannel" was restricted to the west.

With the introduction of TSN and MuchMusic in September 1984, Superchannel converted to a predominantly movie-based service, as did First Choice.

Allarcom was later acquired by Western International Communications, which launched a parallel classic-movie service, MovieMax!, in the Superchannel service area in 1994. Originally featuring movies from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, the channel later expanded to earlier movies (its licence actually allows the channel to air movies that are older than five years). When digital cable and satellite TV became available, Superchannel 2 and 3 were introduced (which were Superchannel 1 on two and four hour delays, respectively), plus MovieMax! 2 on satellite only (a two hour delay of MovieMax!). During the WIC years, there was a noticeable difference in quality between the WIC services and their eastern counterparts, due largely to a 1996 lawsuit against HBO for allegedly promoting the grey-market availability of U.S.-based satellite television providers. WIC was at the time also a significant shareholder in ExpressVu. In retaliation HBO refused to license any of its programmes to Superchannel.

The duelling takeover bids for, and eventual split of, WIC resulted in Superchannel and MovieMax! being transferred to Corus Entertainment, which settled the HBO lawsuit and began to license programmes such as The Sopranos. On April 1, 2001, Superchannel and MovieMax! were rebranded under the umbrella brand Movie Central, which consisted of six diverse channels: Movie Central, Adrenaline Drive (Action), Heartland Road (romance films), Shadow Lane (horror/suspense films), Encore Avenue (classic movies), and Comic Strip (comedy films). On March 1, 2006, the sub-brands were dropped (as customers did not understanding their meanings and found the names confusing), changing into four channels called Movie Central, and two channels called Encore Avenue, each of which are still diverse in their schedules. On the Encore Avenue stations, the films that are aired are now only from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, possibly due to the introduction of Turner Classic Movies in Canada.

On September 22, 2008, The Movie Network and Movie Central announced they would jointly begin offering a dedicated HBO multiplex channel, HBO Canada, on October 30.