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Foxtel to close TCM channel

Devoted: From 13 December, TCM will no longer be available, but FOX Classics will lift its movie quota.

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Hollywood classics movie channel TCM is to be discontinued on the Foxtel platform next month.

A Foxtel statement said, “From 13 December, 2016 TCM will no longer be available on Foxtel. Fear not, FOX Classics is set to fill the void with hundreds of films across a broad range of genres in December and January, including Meet me in St Louis, An Affair to Remember & White Christmas.”

TV Tonight understands the Turner Classic Movies was running a finite inventory of movies, drawn from the Warner Bros. & MGM library. But after plenty of recycling of its films, Foxtel is moving towards a larger pool of classic films, to screen on FOX Classics.

Updated: In a statement TCM said, “Foxtel has made the decision to discontinue carriage of TCM Turner Classic Movies to its subscribers from December 13, 2016. 

“Turner will continue to serve TCM fans throughout Asia Pacific in key markets including New Zealand, Singapore, Philippines, Thailand and Hong Kong, and will explore new ways to offer its content to Australians in the future.

“Turner and Foxtel continue to enjoy a long-term partnership, providing the region’s leading kids brands such as Cartoon Network and Boomerang to its customers, as well as CNN, the world’s #1 news destination.”

21 Responses

  1. $4 rise for football – not in this house – No more TCM – just more bull sh.. – take of the golf show and replace it was a Daddo? get real – what a horrible show that is – very disappointed with this one what is the matter with Brett – at least he was a golfer – goodbye fox – Jill

  2. Just terrific. Increase the price, throw in more commercials then take away the decent channels. Gotta tell you foxtel, your getting extremely hard to justify.

    1. Received a letter from Foxtel this week announcing a price increease of $4.00 a month from February. I suppose they have to pay the NRL a motza for the forthcoming dedicated rugby league channel. Seriously tossing up whether to bale.

  3. We definitely do (did) get a cut down version of TCM on Foxtel to what I saw in the USA. But I always was thankful to have this version of TCM than no version at all. Therefore extremely disappointed with Foxtel’s announcement to stop showing this. TCM showed classics not found elsewhere that would otherwise be forgotten. We will see if the Fox Classics channel will show rare classics rather than just the popular classics. It will need to ditch the TV shows to make time for showing movies. I was hoping that one day, we would upgrade to the US version of TCM, not lose it altogether.

    1. people arnt allowed to enjoy TCM with little ads in it, i agree they are getting too hungry for money and keep changing the goal posts, time to stop subscribing.JM

  4. Recycling is a curious choice of words as Foxtel are becoming rather bland in recent years with their cost cutting programming choices, excessive advertising and use of old much seen repeats to fill time slots. At some point the new attractions and occasional hits like GoT may not be enough to keep the punters happy unless Foxtel completely revamp how they do business, perhaps looking at Netflix type streaming rather than set top boxes, allowing viewers greater flexibility for what they pay to see.

  5. So Foxtel can’t replace TCM with their own produced fulltime classic movies channel sourcing from all the studios they produce their O&O movie channels for now? Pathetic! I bet there is no drop in monthly subscription price to compensate the loss?

  6. I can’t help but read this article and the comments below in 2 different mind sets. Firstly, in a business mind set I understand Foxtel’s decision – rather than pay for a service which has a limited amount of programming on a loop, end the contract and use that money to invest in similar but better quality programming for one of your own channels (ultimately saving money). But from a customer perspective, I only see one more channel being dropped, and although similar programming will be offered on Fox Classics why not have both so the viewer can choose which classic movie they’d rather watch? And even if TCM was on a loop, the latest OzTam C2 report has it with a 0.2 rating – that is equal to or higher than channels such as Sky News Business, Sky News Weather, beIN Sports 1-3, MTV Dance, MTV Music, World Movies, and the list goes on. Is it just a matter of time for the next Foxtel…

    1. Sorry that last sentence was “Is it just a matter of time for the next Foxtel announcement as to which channel will be disappearing next?”. My rant obviously went too long :p .

  7. The Australian TCM feed was absolutely nothing like the American selection. Classic movies from nearly all the US distributors – not just MGM/WB and not repeated over a 6-8 week cycle.
    Check out their website in the states to see what I mean.
    tcm.com/

    1. It’s the larger market syndrome again, Australia’s relatively small population allows service providers to provide less content as the competition is lacking.

    2. Agree recent (for a number of years) TCM have been to say the least Poor> Maybe these executives at Foxtel are too young to remember the quality of the movies that have simply disappeared from Australian screen. May rats infest your homes for thinking so simple. Bring back all those forgotten movies that seem to be constantly on show in the USA please.

  8. This is probably a good thing taken all round. There must be dozens of MGM movies that TCM never showed, e.g. the Esther Williams movies like “On An Island With You”, “Luxury Liner” and plenty of other musicals. I hope Foxtel does indeed ramp up Fox classics and show decent movies and less old time half-hour series, which we have seen ad infinitum.

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