AMC is an American cable television channel. Owned by AMC Global Media, the channel primarily airs acquired feature films, as well as original and acquired drama series.
Launched in late-1980 on New York City's Cablevision as Montage, it originally focused on vintage black and white films, presented uncut and commercial-free. In 1984, the network changed its name to American Movie Classics (AMC). In 1998, AMC began to transition away from its original premium format, becoming an advertising-supported service.
In 2002, AMC was relaunched with a new format, dropping the "American Movie Classics" branding and shifting its focus to contemporary films. In the late-2000s and early-2010s, AMC began to increasingly focus on "prestige" dramas, including the period drama Mad Men, crime drama Breaking Bad;, and its spin-off Better Call Saul. These series would receive critical acclaim, hightening the profile of AMC as a "premium" basic cable network, and making it one of several networks synonymous with the era of "Peak TV". Its post-apocalyptic horror drama The Walking Dead would also become highly-viewed, and in 2014 would achieve the highest viewership for a non-sports program on cable in U.S. history.
As of December 2024, AMC was available in approximately 60 million U.S. pay-TV households. This marks a decline from 65.1 million households in December 2023 and 94.8 million in July 2015, reflecting the broader trend of cord-cutting and the shift toward streaming platforms.
History 1984–2002: Focus on classic films Its origins can be traced back to the launch of its predecessor network Montage which was first launched in late 1980 by Rainbow Media, and initially offered classic movies largely made prior to the 1970s under a commercial-free format to Cablevision subscribers in the New York area. The network changed its name to American Movie Classics, originally abbreviated as AMC, on October 1, 1984, and became a premium channel at the same time. AMC's original format continued to focus on classic movies which were aired during the afternoon and early evening hours in a commercial-free, generally unedited, uncut, uninterrupted and uncolorized format.Gildemeister, Christopher. The Fine Arts Are Hard To Find . Parents Television Council, October 2, 2006.
In 1985, Rainbow became involved in a dispute with Ted Turner's Turner Broadcasting System over broadcast rights to the MGM/UA film library. On July 30 of that year, Rainbow had paid $45 million to license up to 800 pre-1950 films from the library. Weeks later, Turner announced an agreement to purchase the film studio with the intention of airing the films on his Superstation WTBS. Rainbow claimed it had exclusive basic cable rights to the films for the next five years. Despite its widespread cable carriage, Turner claimed that because WTBS was a broadcast station, the restriction did not apply. This led to both companies filing lawsuits against each other in September, and MGM/UA terminating the agreement with Rainbow after alleging that Rainbow had breached it by announcing its intention to offer a premium tier to the AMC cable service. By October, the lawsuit was settled. Rainbow received $50 million and agreed to terminate the licensing deal on December 31, 1985, before which time AMC would not be allowed to convert to a basic service. Turner completed the acquisition of MGM in early 1986, but his ownership was short-lived and he sold it back to the previous owner months later. However, he retained the film library and executed his original plan to air the movies on WTBS and later on his new networks Turner Network Television and Turner Classic Movies, a direct competitor to AMC.
The new movie network struggled to gain carriage. By March 1986, it had only 300,000 subscribers. To solve this problem, Cablevision and CBS (which became half owner of Rainbow about a year earlier) worked out a deal with the nation's largest cable television provider, Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI). TCI gained a one-third interest in AMC (but not Bravo, Rainbow's other network) and in exchange made AMC available as an offering for most of its 3.9 million subscribers. (TCI's Liberty Media division eventually would create another premium service—Encore, which also originally focused on older films, mainly from the 1960s to the 1980s – five years later in April 1991). During its early years, it was not uncommon for AMC to host a marathon of Marx Brothers films, or show classics such as the original 1925 release of The Phantom of the Opera. In 1987, the channel began to be carried on the basic cable tiers of many cable providers.Gomery, Douglas. American Movie Classics . Museum of Broadcast Communications In July 1988, AMC added its first original programming: Classic Stories From Classic Stars (featuring interviews), followed later that year by Star Facts (biographies) and a mini-documentary series Making of a Classic. By 1989, AMC was available to 39 million subscribers in the U.S.
On December 1, 1990, AMC began operating on a 24-hour-a-day schedule.
Beginning in 1993, AMC presented an annual Film Preservation Festival to raise awareness of and funding for film preservation. Coordinated with The Film Foundation, an industry group that was founded by acclaimed director Martin Scorsese, the festival was originally conceived as a multi-day marathon presenting rare and previously lost films, many airing for the first time on television, along with behind-the-scenes reports on the technical and monetary issues faced by those engaged in archival restoration. Portions of the festival were often dedicated to all-day marathons focusing on a single performer. During its fifth anniversary year in 1998, Scorsese credited the Festival for creating "not only a greater awareness, but [...] more of an expectation now to see restored films." In 1996, curator of the Museum of Modern Art Mary Lee Bandy called the Festival "the most important public event in support of film preservation."Van Gelder, Lawrence, (June 30, 1996) "Restoring Films to a Former Glory", The New York Times. Retrieved September 20, 2008. By its tenth anniversary in 2003, the Festival had raised $2 million from the general public, which The Film Foundation divided among its five-member archives.
In 1993, Cablevision's Rainbow Media division became the majority owner of the channel, when it bought out Liberty Media's 50% stake in AMC; incidentally in August of that year, Liberty announced its intent to purchase the 25% stake in the channel that Cablevision held at the time, with the Turner Broadcasting System helping to finance the buyout that included an option for TBS to eventually acquire AMC outright. The following year, Time Warner (which later purchased rival Turner Classic Movies following the company's 1996 acquisition of the Turner Broadcasting System) also attempted to acquire at least part of Liberty Media's stake in AMC.
In June 1995, AMC became involved with another dispute with Turner. It filed a $550 million breach of contract lawsuit against Turner Entertainment, which alleged that the company violated AMC's exclusive cable television rights to the pre-1950 Warner Bros. Pictures film library to broadcast approximately 30 times between July 1994 and April 1995, charging that Turner's objective in violating the contract was "to gain unfair advantage for the Turner Classic Movies cable network (which debuted in April 1994) at the expense of AMC."; Turner owns rights to the RKO Radio Pictures film library and licensed RKO's films to AMC in an output deal that was slated to last through 2004. Under the terms of the deal, AMC obtained the RKO titles in exclusive windows.
Around this time, General Electric/NBC owned a stake in AMC – which it divested in the early 2000s. From 1996 to 1998, AMC aired its first original series, Remember WENN, a half-hour scripted series about a radio station during the peak of radio's influence in the 1930s. The show was well received by both critics and its enthusiastic fans, but was abruptly cancelled after its fourth season following management changes at the channel (WENN was followed up by The Lot, which lasted for only 17 episodes). Despite a well publicized write-in campaign to save the series, the show was not renewed for its originally scheduled fifth season.
One popular AMC program was American Pop! (originally intended as a preview of a new 24-hour cable channel), which ran from 1998 to 2003 and featured movies from the 1950s and 1960s aimed at baby boomers (such as Beach Blanket Bingo and Ski Party). Of particular interest to movie completists were the segments that AMC played to fill out the timeslot (Saturday nights from 10:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. Eastern Time): classic movie trailers, drive-in movie ads and snipes (bits extolling viewers to visit the snack bar, etc.), along with music videos cribbed from movie musicals from the period.
The majority of the films presented on AMC during the 1990s had originally been released by Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Columbia Pictures, and Universal Pictures. The channel also occasionally showed classic silent films. The regular hosts of the telecasts were Bob Dorian and later, Nick Clooney (brother of singer Rosemary and father of actor and businessman George), as well as New York City radio personality Gene Klavan from WNEW (1130 AM, now WBBR). Another WNEW alum, Al "Jazzbo" Collins, provided his voice for the "Jazzbo's Swingin' Soundies" series of interstitials.
For most of its first 18 years in existence, AMC provided uncut and uncolorized films without commercial interruption. Its revenue came from carriage fees provided by the cable providers that maintained carriage agreements with the channel. However, in 1998, AMC began accepting traditional advertising, incorporating limited commercial interruptions between films (its sister movie channel Romance Classics, which had launched only one year earlier, became an entirely ad-supported channel at that point). By 2001, AMC had also incorporated commercial breaks during its movie telecasts.Battaglio, Stephen. It now has enough commercials to make movie watching almost as intolerable as any other commercial channel."Old-Movie Channels Nearing Showdown". Daily News. June 27, 2003. As a result of this move, Turner Classic Movies became the only one of the two classic film-focused networks to present their films commercial-free.
2002–2009: Format change and expansion into original programming
On September 30, 2002, AMC underwent a significant rebranding, changing its format from a classic movie channel, to a more general focus on movies from all erasWhy did AMC change its format? From the AMCtv.com FAQ – as well as shortening its name to just the "AMC" abbreviation, and introducing a new logo (a rectangular outline with a lowercase and uppercase "aMC" text) and a new slogan that says TV for Movie people. Kate McEnroe, then-president of Rainbow Media, cited lack of subsidies from cable providers as the reason for the addition of advertising, and cited ad agencies who insist on programming relevant to their products' consumers as the reason for the shift to recent movies instead of just classics. At the time of the format switchover, the company also attempted to launch a spin-off digital cable channel, AMC's Hollywood Classics, a commercial-free channel would have aired black-and-white classics from the 1930s through the 1950s that American Movie Classics had been airing up until its format changeover; however, the new channel never launched.Battaglio, Stephen. "Old-Movie Channels Nearing Showdown". Daily News. June 28, 2002.