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From: jlilien@sdcrdcf.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.tv
Subject: Re: HBO vs. Showtime
Message-ID: <798@sdcrdcf.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 25-Jan-84 16:04:57 EST
Article-I.D.: sdcrdcf.798
Posted: Wed Jan 25 16:04:57 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 27-Jan-84 12:30:28 EST
References: <866@pegasus.UUCP>
Reply-To: jlilien@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Joel Lilienkamp)
Organization: System Development Corporation, Santa Monica
Lines: 49


HBO, Showtime, and The Movie Channel are all "about" the same.  The differences
are minor, at best.

HBO was the first, and their "we were here first" attitude is present in most
of their previews and ads on real TV.  They show mostly movies, with some
specials and sports.  The specials are often entitled "Standing Room Only",
which are films of fairly recent live shows.  The classic to date was probably
Simon and Garfunkle's concert in Central Park.  The sports in mostly boxing,
although they do have shows like this week in the NHL, and provide some Tennis
coverage.  The locally produced program's are typically trashy, full of lots
of mushy stuff that always works out OK in the end.  The Paper Chase is locally
produced by Showtime, not HBO.  One local show, "Not Necessarily the News,"
is a news comedy show that is consistently very good.  One thing to note is
that HBO considers itself to be a family station, and only shows R rated movies
at night.

We don't subscribe to Showtime at my house, so I can't really comment on
it directly.  When they have "sample weekends", I really can't tell the
difference between it and HBO.

The Movie Channel only shows movies.  No sports, and no specials.  They
don't have a particularly larger selection in any given month though, so
its just more reruns.

My objection to all of these services is the programming and scheduling.
The programming is based on the selection of a few movies as "feature"
movies of the month.  Normally, these movies haven't been shown on cable
before, and were in the Theater 9-12 months ago.  They proceed to run
these movies into the ground.  They are on not less than 10 days on each
station.  And since the stations all pick the same feature movies, you have
a pretty good chance of overlap.  Sometimes, two stations even begin the
same movie at the same time.  To this set of feature movies they add a
other movies to round out the month.  These movies were either feature
movies a few months ago, or else they are classics over 25 years old.
They rarely have a movie on between 3 and 20 years old; I guess there
weren't any good ones then! :-)  These schedule is made by merging the
feature movies, sports, and specials with the support movies.  They
really don't care much about times of day (except regarding kids).  If
they show a particular movie on some weeknight, this does not mean that
on the same weeknight at the same time in the following week, the same
movie wont be shown.  Another problem is with irregular length movies.
If a movie is 2 hours and 6 minutes long, it will not get scheduled as
often as one that is 1 hour 47 minutes.  The times it does get scheduled
are not necessarily convenient, either.

Well, much more of this and I would have to submit it to net.flame  ~~~~-

	Joel