A TCM for TV shows?

Every now and then I would read about Joe Pyne interviewing Frank Zappa and wonder what they were talking about, and I'd never get around to searching online for the answer. Now I have it! Thank you, and LOL!!!!

And FWIW, I'd love to see some kind of "TCTV" channel such as you suggested---perhaps each night running several episodes in a row of some old TV show, and moving between the decades from the fifties thru the eighties or nineties. I don't know if I'd really want to watch the commercials too, but you never know....

 

Restoration of infamous Joe Pyne talk show (video geeks & Zappa fans take note)

 

I've grown to really enjoy the Decades Channel, particularly its weekend binges of vintage programming, and shorter weekday binges of seldom-seen series. However, the local station that carries Decades is shuttering its doors toward the end of next month. As I understand it, the FCC is acquiring bandwidth from a number of low-power stations across the country for future cell phone usage.
I already lost GetTV last year, and now this. I don't suppose there are any straming services that carry Decades?

 

It is on PS Vue and I saw it listed on one other similar service, just don't remember which one.

 

Hour shows on ME-TV come in at a shade under 46 minutes, meaning that they are cut by anywhere from 4 to 6 minutes, depending on the show. TCM runs complete and commercial free. Big difference.

 

Yes, there is a need for a TCM for TV shows, a big need. There are hundreds and hundreds of shows which will not be seen again otherwise, for various reasons, the biggest one being that the studios that own them won't spend the money to transfer the elements. If a show does not have existing tape masters, as many of the shows in the CBS, Universal, Sony, Warner and Fox vaults do not, they are unavailable. The only reason something like The Millionaire for instance is running, is that ME-TV paid for dirty transfers from 16mm. What most in this thread don't get is that Decades, Antenna, Cozi and most of the time, GET, all either cut or timespeed the shows. We need a TCM which would treat TV shows the same way that movies are treated. Uncut, commercial free and with decent transfers from the original elements. Yes, there were movies run prior to TCM. Off beat to hell 16mm prints and BBB, as a late friend used to call it. Butchered Beyond Belief.

 

"Beat to hell" is what we always called them. My other line is "Super 8 on a Bedsheet," which is what some of those public-domain TV shows now look like. I seem to recall The Millionaire was owned by MCA/Universal but somehow, CBS/Viacom wound up with the rights. They're sitting on a ton of old TV shows and movies that they're doing absolutely nothing with, which is tragic. All of this stuff should be prepped, preserved, and restored for streaming, if you ask me.

 

he was a money bit though because of the contracts he allowed to be given to wrestlers.

 

We've already got one of those, it's MeTV and shows Perry Mason and The Rifleman 24/7.

 

MeTv is good. AntennaTV is entering the New Year by adding a bunch of shows to their slate that are of a too-recent vintage for my taste. What I like(d) about Decades and GetTV is that they would sometimes bring out old shows that didn't have enough episodes for a syndication package. For instance, as part of their daily binge format, Decades has scheduled some episodes of the post-Gracie 'George Burns Show,' which I've been curious about. Only for a day (Dec. 26), but at least it's a chance to get a taste of it.

 

Yeah, if you don't mind cut up shows that have run a million times over.