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Movies associated with the TV channel you first watched them


Unlucky Bastard

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When I was a kid, I watched a lot of movies on free-to-air TV, so that meant I still associate them with the station they initially aired on. Now these channels I'm about to mention will probably mean nothing to non-Aussies here, but here's how it goes for me:

 

The Blues Brothers, Supergirl, Superman IV, Masters of the Universe, Poltergeist, Ben-Hur, King of Kings, Batman '66, Star Treks 1-6, were all Channel 7 movies.

 

Pretty much anything Warner Bros. was a Channel 9 movie. But also some others like Ghostbusters II, Short Circuit 2, Superman III, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Star Trek Generations, etc.

 

Ghostbusters, Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Close Encounters, E.T., Die Hard, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Superman I, Superman II, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Electric Dreams, Alien, Aliens, Predator, Short Circuit, Star Treks 8-10 etc. were all Channel 10 movies.

 

Then as time rolled on in the 90s, I started to anticipate what channel movies would end up on TV. For example, when I saw ID4 in the cinema, to me it felt like it might be Channel 7 material, it just had that potential Channel 7 feel to it, and so in a few years when it first aired, it was! But since then, it's cycled through the other stations too. Even so, it doesn't feel like a Channel 9 or 10 movie to me, it still feels really 7. Other movies I'd be disappointed they'd end up on the channel I didn't expect them to, like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - I wanted that to be a 7 movie, but it first aired on 9. And the second movie first aired on 10! It just felt wrong!

 

I don't really pay much attention to this anymore, but it's funny to me how those broadcast movie staples don't exist anymore. Like for a few years, the Harry Potter movies were obvious candidates for Channel 9, and so they did air on that station for a long time, but lately they've been airing on Channel 7.

 

Anyone else have this association thing going with movies?

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I know what you mean ... here in the UK, ITV have held the rights to screen the Bond films since I was a kid (and in terms of 'terrestrial' television screenings, it and its 'sister' channels still do nowadays). It would definitely be odd if the rights switched to the BBC or Channel 4 and they started showing them.    

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Well, we only had one TV channel between 1960 and 1992, so pretty much anything I saw in that period is associated with our public broadcaster NRK. Although we did get cable television in the 80s, so plenty of things I associate with, type, Sky Channel and Super Channel (mostly TV shows, not films).

 

But even after that, I find it difficult to associate certain films with certain TV channels.

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Around here, on the beginning of the 2000s, basically SBT (as in Sistema Brasileiro de Televisão, one of the weirdest channels ever invented), the second most watched TV channel on my country, had the rights to mostly Warner Bros. stuff, not only movies, but also cartoons, TV series, etc. So I remember it airing the Potter movies, LOTR trilogy, the Burton/Schumacher Batman movies, Green Mile, Final Destination, The Perfect Storm... So closely was their association with Warner that, on 2003, a few days before the premiere of The Matrix Reloaded, SBT aired the prequel short Final Flight of the Osiris.

 

Then there was Rede Globo, the biggest channel and media conglomerate around here, and probably one of the biggest on Latin America too. They had the rights to Sony/Columbia movies, Paramount, eventually they've got Disney as well and Universal for several years until they formed a partnership with Record TV, a major TV channel around here whose founder is the leader of the Evangelical, non-denominational church called, well, Universal Church of the Kingdom of God. 

 

There is also Bandeirantes, or Band, which used to air a lot of old action/martial arts movies, and also some soft core porn of the Emannuelle franchise by 2 or 3 a.m.

 

These days, as people hardly watch broadcast TV anymore, most of the big film studios are with Globo, everything from Warner to Disney, Universal, Sony, etc. I don't even know which movies the other channels are airing, since I don't watch them due to their horrible quality and bizarre programs (seriously, one day just google "Programa Sílvio Santos").

 

On cable TV, the movies used to premiere on the premium channels Rede Telecine (five movie channels that these days are also a local streaming service, controlled by Globo) and HBO one year or a few months after they were on theaters. Telecine had the rights to Disney, Universal, Paramount, MGM and Fox, and HBo had the rights to Warner and Sony... But these days I don't even know what the situation is, since I've seen Warner movies airing on Telecine.

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When I first watched The Ten Commandments, it was taped from a broadcast on ABC. Same with Return of the Jedi. I also remember the announcer describing it as "the mother of all Star Wars" (this was in the early nineties). 

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I had Masters of the Universe taped off HBO with the old intro.

 

My original ROTJ was taped off CBS and had scenes deleted (The Leia/Ewok scene in the woods was shortened) so when I got the official FOX video, it took some adjusting. The first Special Edition!

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2 hours ago, Gruesome Son of a Bitch said:

I had Masters of the Universe taped off HBO with the old intro.

 

My original ROTJ was taped off CBS and had scenes deleted (The Leia/Ewok scene in the woods was shortened) so when I got the official FOX video, it took some adjusting. The first Special Edition!

 

That's like the sanitised broadcast version of The Blues Brothers I grew up with, which led to me doubletaking when I heard all the "fuck" words on the DVD.

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What's interesting, Alex?

The film, the TV channel, the fact that it's called Veronica, it's Dutch, or that you watched it?

 

 

 

6 hours ago, Thekthithm said:

 

That's like the sanitised broadcast version of The Blues Brothers I grew up with, which led to me doubletaking when I heard all the "fuck" words on the DVD.

Hee, hee, hee.

I watched THE TOWERING INFERNO at the cinema five times, and audiences laughed out loud at what Steve McQueen said after "How do I get back down?". Of course, that word was edited, on its UK TV premiere - BBC 1, Boxing Day, 1980, in case anyone's interested.

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6 minutes ago, Richard said:

What's interesting, Alex?

The film, the TV channel, the fact that it's called Veronica, it's Dutch, or that you watched it?

 

 

The fact that I remember that. 

 

I just remembered another one. Will it be equally as interesting as the previous one? Let's see.

 

51lUz9RVJdL.jpg

 

Believe it or not, but I watched this on Filmnet. Baffling, isn't it?

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They really should restore this movie and give it a decent release on Blu-ray. It looked incredible on Filmnet but that was the only time that it looked good. Will Disney (Touchstone) ever do it? Probably not. Like you said, it really is underrated.

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As a small kid, I didn't watch a lot of movies on TV, so I don't have that association with much.  We had VHSes we owned, and a lot of em, but that was kind of it.  In my teen years, I found myself watching a lot of movies on Comedy Central that I hadn't seen before and honestly wouldn't have gone out and rented or bought.  Things like the Revenge of the Nerds movies, Life Stinks, PCU.  Comedies from the 1980s and 1990s that never hit it big, so they were cheap enough for CC to run ad nauseum.  Spent a lot of summer days and weekends idly watching movies on Comedy Central.  So to the extent that I think about any of those movies, which wouldn't be much, I would associate them with Comedy Central.

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11 hours ago, Alexcremers said:

They really should restore this movie and give it a decent release on Blu-ray. It looked incredible on Filmnet but that was the only time that it looked good. Will Disney (Touchstone) ever do it? Probably not. Like you said, it really is underrated.

Yes. It's a little like DRAGONSLAYER, and SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES: three forgotten Disney films. They're not forgotten by fans, but by Disney.

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2 hours ago, mstrox said:

As a small kid, I didn't watch a lot of movies on TV, so I don't have that association with much.  We had VHSes we owned, and a lot of em, but that was kind of it.  In my teen years, I found myself watching a lot of movies on Comedy Central that I hadn't seen before and honestly wouldn't have gone out and rented or bought.  Things like the Revenge of the Nerds movies, Life Stinks, PCU.  Comedies from the 1980s and 1990s that never hit it big, so they were cheap enough for CC to run ad nauseum.  Spent a lot of summer days and weekends idly watching movies on Comedy Central.  So to the extent that I think about any of those movies, which wouldn't be much, I would associate them with Comedy Central.

 

This is so depressing.

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