Turner Classic Movies - History

History

Eight years before the launch of TCM, Ted Turner had acquired Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but shortly after sold the studio while retaining the library for itself. The vast library of Turner Entertainment would serve as the base program upon its launch; Turner Classic Movies officially debuted on April 14, 1994 at 6 p.m. ET with Ted Turner ceremonially launching the channel in New York City's Times Square district. The date was chosen for its significance as "the exact centennial anniversary of the first public movie showing in New York City." The very first movie ever screened on TCM was the 1939 classic epic Gone with the Wind, exactly what its sister station, TNT, had aired as its debut program six years before.

At the time of its launch, TCM was available to only approximately one million cable subscribers; the channel served as a competitor of AMC (at the time, called American Movie Classics), which had a virtually identical format to TCM as both cable channels ran mostly pre-1970 films; though by 2002, AMC had reformatted itself to feature films from all eras, leaving TCM as the only cable movie channel devoted entirely to classic films.

Before the creation of TCM, quite a few titles from its vast library of movies were broadcast — with commercial interruptions — on Turner's TNT channel, along with Turner's controversial colorized versions of black-and-white classics such as The Maltese Falcon. When TCM was created in 1994, however, colorization did not carry over to the new channel. As Gary R. Edgerton wrote in the winter 2000 issue of The Journal of Popular Film and Television, TCM immediately advertised itself in April 1994 "with the promise: 'uninterrupted, uncolorized and commercial-free!' Attitudes had evidently come full circle. Colorization was now unfashionable and unprofitable — even for Ted Turner and his colleagues at TBS."

In 1996, the Turner Broadcasting System merged with Time Warner. Not only did this put TCM and Warner Bros. under the same corporate umbrella, but it also gave TCM access to the post-1949 Warner Bros. library (which itself includes other acquired properties such as the Lorimar, Saul Zaentz, and National General Pictures libraries); incidentally, TCM had already been running some of Warner's film titles through a licensing agreement with the studio made prior to the launch of the channel.

In 2000, TCM launched the annual Young Composers Film Competition, inviting aspiring composers to participate in a judged competition. Grand prize has been the opportunity to score a restored, feature-length silent film, mentored by a well-known composer, with subsequent premiere of the new work on the TCM channel. As of 2006, films which have been rescored include Camille (1921) with Rudolph Valentino, two Lon Chaney films, Ace of Hearts (1921) and Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928), and Greta Garbo's The Temptress (1926).

More recently, TCM has collaborated in boxed set DVD releases of previously unreleased films by noted actors, directors, or studios. The sets often include bonus discs including documentaries and shorts from the TCM library. In April 2010, TCM held the first TCM Classic Film Festival, at the Grauman's Chinese Theater and the Grauman's Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. Hosted by Robert Osborne, the four-day long annual festival celebrated Hollywood and its movies, and featured celebrity appearances, special events and screenings of around 50 classic movies including several newly restored by the Film Foundation, an organization devoted to preserving Hollywood's classic film legacy. Upon completion of the festival, TCM announced that they would hold a second festival in 2011.