I’m really curious to know what rules the programmers have to follow when scheduling the HD programs on either of these channels. Some movies seem to be rare gems that you need to be lucky to catch, whilst others are repeated ad nauseium. Some examples that spring to mind – In the 12 months that I’ve been watching the HBO I’ve only noticed one showing of ‘The Professional’. A few months ago ‘The Pledge’ turned up out of the blue, had two or possibly three showings, and then quickly disappeared without trace. I can understand that ‘The Professional’ was perhaps one of HBO’s first films (shown many times originally) and was just given a one off encore but I think ‘The Pledge’ is too new for that to be the case. For a comparison I notice that ‘Saving Silverman’ is back for another seven showings in June alone.
My set up decided to throw a wobbly last night and began to pixelate like crazy, half an hour into ‘Apocalypse Now’. Took me an hour to solve the problem but never mind, I thought, lets just check to see when it’s on again. Looking at the June and July Showtime HD schedule it’s nowhere to be found and I believe it’s only had three showings in total so far. Weird.
So you end up with the impression that there is a bias towards some movies and not others and I’m wondering why that would be. Are royalties involved with each showing and some royalties are more expensive than others ? Repeats are a necessity for the programmers, and I’m sure we would all start complaining if all movies suddenly only had one showing, but I just wish there was a better overall balance.
Thanks, I feel better now that I've got that off my chest
Tony.
My set up decided to throw a wobbly last night and began to pixelate like crazy, half an hour into ‘Apocalypse Now’. Took me an hour to solve the problem but never mind, I thought, lets just check to see when it’s on again. Looking at the June and July Showtime HD schedule it’s nowhere to be found and I believe it’s only had three showings in total so far. Weird.
So you end up with the impression that there is a bias towards some movies and not others and I’m wondering why that would be. Are royalties involved with each showing and some royalties are more expensive than others ? Repeats are a necessity for the programmers, and I’m sure we would all start complaining if all movies suddenly only had one showing, but I just wish there was a better overall balance.
Thanks, I feel better now that I've got that off my chest
Tony.