Programming Pattern?
Posted: May 18th, 2007, 1:49 am
Don't look now but I'm making my first topic in this here refugee type place:
Regarding TCM programming, it would be interesting to learn just how often TCM shows films over a given period of time. I am prompted to ask that just now as I again watch, or more rather monitor, “Crossfire”, a fine film with the Roberts’ Ryan, Young, and Mitchum. I don’t possess the energy or wherewithal to graph such things, but I do wonder just how much redundancy TCM offers, albeit non-adjusted for the hour of the day. Obviously there’s a difference between 2 a.m. weeknight and primetime Saturday.
I’m not complaining, at all, but I am interested in the rotation over time, and it’s not as if I think there’s much of a design out over the course of, for instance, a year. But it is appropriate that there be a core of five or even two hundred films over a year. Have the TCM programmers ever publically announced much related to their formula or pattern? Of course we see the birthdays and the genre cycles, but through it all there is, by default or design, a playlist, as is right and indicative of taste.
It’s an interesting mix of familiars and obscurities, really rather well culivated to our tastes, judging at least from my own satisfaction. I tend to not pay that much attention to this or that acquisition of a given library, though it’s clear TCM has recently added a bunch of new stuff. Mostly I’m a dumb beneficiary after the fact, and so much the better.
Anyway, though I suspect there is not, is there any objective tracking of such things? For example, to go high profile, just how often does TCM screen “Casablanca”? Or “Little Foxes”? Or “Thunder Road”? Funny thing about the past: it’s finitely defined and yet seems almost like an unexplored, infinite void, or at least such is the blessing of the relatively ignorant, like myself. Hell, I always knew about Rita Hayworth but it was only last month that I discovered how much I love her, present tense: red hair, cheekbones, that smile, and something else I'll never understand. I’m just askin’: how does TCM do what it does? Or at least how often?
Regarding TCM programming, it would be interesting to learn just how often TCM shows films over a given period of time. I am prompted to ask that just now as I again watch, or more rather monitor, “Crossfire”, a fine film with the Roberts’ Ryan, Young, and Mitchum. I don’t possess the energy or wherewithal to graph such things, but I do wonder just how much redundancy TCM offers, albeit non-adjusted for the hour of the day. Obviously there’s a difference between 2 a.m. weeknight and primetime Saturday.
I’m not complaining, at all, but I am interested in the rotation over time, and it’s not as if I think there’s much of a design out over the course of, for instance, a year. But it is appropriate that there be a core of five or even two hundred films over a year. Have the TCM programmers ever publically announced much related to their formula or pattern? Of course we see the birthdays and the genre cycles, but through it all there is, by default or design, a playlist, as is right and indicative of taste.
It’s an interesting mix of familiars and obscurities, really rather well culivated to our tastes, judging at least from my own satisfaction. I tend to not pay that much attention to this or that acquisition of a given library, though it’s clear TCM has recently added a bunch of new stuff. Mostly I’m a dumb beneficiary after the fact, and so much the better.
Anyway, though I suspect there is not, is there any objective tracking of such things? For example, to go high profile, just how often does TCM screen “Casablanca”? Or “Little Foxes”? Or “Thunder Road”? Funny thing about the past: it’s finitely defined and yet seems almost like an unexplored, infinite void, or at least such is the blessing of the relatively ignorant, like myself. Hell, I always knew about Rita Hayworth but it was only last month that I discovered how much I love her, present tense: red hair, cheekbones, that smile, and something else I'll never understand. I’m just askin’: how does TCM do what it does? Or at least how often?