Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is a movie-oriented cable television channel, owned by the Turner Broadcasting System subsidiary of Time Warner, featuring commercial-free classic movies, mostly from the Turner Entertainment film library, which comprises the pre-May 1986 MGM, RKO and pre-1950 Warner Bros. films. TCM is headquartered at the Techwood Campus in Atlanta, Georgia, in Midtown.

About TCM[link]

Unlike AMC, Turner Classic Movies is essentially commercial-free, advertising only TCM products, promos for specific films scheduled to air on the channel in primetime, typically using the film's original movie trailer. It also airs promos for special programming and featurettes about classic film actors and actresses in between features. TCM's content has also remained mostly uncut and uncolorized (depending upon the original content of movies, particularly movies rated by the MPAA after 1968). Because of the uncut and commercial-free nature of the channel, TCM is formatted similarly to a premium channel; as such, viewers might find that certain films, particularly those made from the 1960s onward, may feature nudity, sexual content, violence and strong profanity; the channel also features premium channel-style ratings bumpers seconds before a film starts.

From time to time, the channel shows restored versions of films, particularly old silent films with newly commissioned musical soundtracks. TCM is also a major backer of WGBH's Descriptive Video Service program, and many of the films aired on the network have visual description for the blind and visually impaired, which are accessible through the SAP option through a television or cable/satellite receiver.

As a result, viewers interested in tracing the career development of actresses like Barbara Stanwyck or Greta Garbo or actors like Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart have the unique opportunity to see most of the feature films made during their careers, from beginning to end. Unlike AMC and Fox Movie Channel, Turner Classic Movies presents many of its features in their original screen aspect ratio (widescreen or full screen) whenever possible. TCM also regularly presents widescreen presentations of films not available in the format on any home video release. In 2008 TCM was given a Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting.^[1]

History[link]

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.^[2][3] 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;^[4] 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."