Criterion & Turner Classic Movies pair up for new streaming service, Filmstruck

I imagine they’ll be around but I don’t think you make a move like this to make existing services better. I think you do it so that companies can pad their upcoming balkanized streaming services with their back catalog.

Criterion says they will find a new home. Wherever they go, I’ll follow. I’ll probably subscribe to TCM individually as well.

But this blows chunks.

I had been telling my wife about this service (she loves older movies and is desperate to find something to watch every night) but we never got around to subbing. I’m glad now since it would have been painful to have access to a bunch of classic films and then lose it.

I think the problem a service like this encounters is that a lot of its core audience is dorks like me.

I have 30 or so Criterion films on physical media already.

I have had Filmstruck since it was in beta.

I’ve…kinda run out of movies to watch, for lack of a better term. Or at least “movies I feel like watching just then.” And that’s the issue perhaps. They’re not making Clouzot’s Diabolique again. Or any more Truffaut or Kurosawa or Howard Hawks or John Ford movies.

Rats, I have been thinking about resubbing all year. I was just waiting for them to improve their UI and fix other technical issues. It was a noble attempt, and I hope something very similar pops up soon.

They’d love my wife then… we don’t have ANY physical media. She love old movies.She loves watching favorites over and over. Plus, she also has short-term memory issues so after maybe a year she’d forget she watched something and would watch it again. :(

It will. The articles say again and again that the reason this is happening is AT&T wants to move Warner’s archive to a larger stream service to compete with Disney. Criterion will find another home.

I think this was also a major failing. For a streaming service to succeed it has to also has to work pretty well, and be multi-platform. With Filmstruck, it felt like the tech folks who set up the service were basically contract workers who were dismissed once it was running, and no one ever really looked at it for updates and fixes…or getting it to run on a wider spectrum of platforms out there.

All the articles say nothing about U/I or an unsuccessful model. What they do say is that, now that they and Time-Warner have merged, AT& T wanted to pull Warner material from the service (killing it) to combine with other, broadly popular holdings to compete with Disney’s soon to come streaming service.

The closing of FilmStruck is the latest development in the Warner-AT&T Merger. Earlier this month, the company announced the closing of Super Deluxe, a digital content production studio, and DramaFever, a streaming service specializing in Korean dramas and other Asian programming. WarnerMedia boss John Stankey announced the company will throw down the gauntlet against Disney and digital competitors with a new direct-to-consumer streaming service launching by the end of 2019. The new streaming service is expected to draw from the media company’s broad collection of films, television shows, animation, and its library.

It’s very possible we could see Criterion and TCM partner up, or find another partner, or some-such.

But this was all about AT&T getting all Time-Warner’s stuff free and clear for it’s mega-stream service, looking to battle with Disney and Netflix.

Warner’s own press release does, in its own way, by referring to Filmstruck specifically as a “niche” service. That’s corporate speak for “We really didn’t want to put resources into this.”

Absolutely. Because they have bigger plans for the Warner content. They can have at it. I’ll go where Criterion does.

Damn, I’m currently subbed and was JUST on it the other day. I wonder what the sunset period will be?

We all know stuff like this is coming though. As more streaming content goes online, it just won’t support every product with its own service. Like you guys I just hope the content ends up somewhere I’m already on.

November 29.

Warner = MGM content too, IIRC, right?

Well, that sucks. I un-subbed a few months ago, because frankly, between TCM’s online offerings and MUBI/Kanopy, my classic/foreign film needs were largely covered. I guess I’m part of the problem.

I guess I’m happy, since I’ll no longer be taunted by its lack of availability in my area, even though I was constantly hit by their ads, as an obsessed TCM /Criterion Collection viewer.

And announcing the new Criterion Collection channel, debuting in spring, 2019:

Like a repertory movie house that was owned by a couple of guys and then one of them couldn’t go on and then the other guy was bailed out by a rich uncle:

Or to put it another way, @Navaronegun was right.

Edit: Jinx

It’s about time. They keep pairing up with unreliable partners, and they just need to go their own way.

https://gifimage.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/sprockets-gif-13.gif

Signed up as an annual charter subscriber.