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Movie Central (occasionally abbreviated as "MC") is a Canadian English language Category A premium cable and satellite television channel that is owned by Corus Entertainment. Movie Central is designated to operate west of the Ontario-Manitoba border, including the territories. Although the channel's name implies that it focuses solely on theatrically released motion pictures, Movie Central's programming also includes original and foreign television series, made-for-cable movies and documentaries. Movie Central is carried by various Canadian cable, IPTV, and satellite television providers in Western Canada including Bell TV, Shaw Direct, Shaw Cable, Access Communications, TELUS TV and Westman Communications Group, among other providers. Its programming is comparable to that of The Movie Network (TMN), a separately-owned pay service which is marketed to Eastern Canada, in areas located east of the Ontario-Manitoba border. Movie Central is currently headquartered at the Corus Quay building in Toronto, Ontario, alongside Corus's other television properties, despite that city being located outside the service's territory. On November 19, 2015, Corus announced plans to discontinue Movie Central and Encore Avenue in favour of TMN and TMN Encore, which will both expand nationally, and end its participation in HBO Canada. Corus will receive a C$211 million payment from TMN owner Bell Media as a result of the changeover. ==History== In 1982, the CRTC licensed Canada's first national pay television services. The commission licensed one national general-interest service – First Choice – as well as a number of short-lived niche channels, and several regional general-interest channels. Allarcom Pay Television, owned by Charles Allard, was initially granted the regional concession for Alberta. However, by the time Allarcom's service, Superchannel, launched on February 1, 1983, Allarcom had apparently also gained control of a second regional channel, Ontario Independent Pay Television.〔"(The Launch of SUPERCHANNEL )", YouTube video, retrieved December 15, 2007. The video shows distinct feeds for "ONT Program" and "ALTA Program" launching at different times.〕 By January 1984, Superchannel had received approval to expand its service area to Saskatchewan (replacing Teletheatre, a province-wide pay-cable network that had been operating since the late 1970s), Manitoba, and what is now the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.〔(ARCHIVED - Decision CRTC 84-1 )〕 Allarcom also took control of Aim Satellite Broadcasting (serving British Columbia and Yukon) and provided the Superchannel feed in those markets on an "interim" basis while Aim could establish its own service.〔(ARCHIVED - Decision CRTC 84-2 )〕 By the spring of 1984, it became clear that the remaining pay service operators were continuing to post substantial monetary losses. In August, AIM and OIPT were merged into Allarcom's operations, and the resulting channel exited the Ontario market. Meanwhile, the formerly national service First Choice agreed to serve only Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada.〔(ARCHIVED - Decision CRTC 84-654 )〕 As part of their agreement, Allarcom and First Choice agreed to jointly market their services under the name First Choice Superchannel, in which the Superchannel "star" branding was predominant. This practice continued until 1989, at which point the "First Choice" name remained in the east and "Superchannel" was restricted to the west. With the respective launches of The Sports Network and MuchMusic in September 1984, Superchannel reduced the amount of sports programming and concert specials that it broadcast, and converted to a predominantly movie-based service, as did First Choice. Allarcom was later acquired by Western International Communications, which launched a parallel classic movie service, MovieMax!, in the Superchannel service area in October 1994. Originally featuring movies from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, the channel's programming later expanded to include older movies (its licence actually allows the channel to air movies that were released more than five years from the present year). When digital cable and satellite television became available in the 1990s, Superchannel 2 and Superchannel 3 were launched (which were essentially timeshifted versions of Superchannel 1 on respective two- and four-hour delays), along with MovieMax! 2, which was available on satellite only (operating as a two-hour delayed feed of MovieMax!). During its years under WIC ownership, there was a noticeable difference in programming quality between the WIC services and their eastern counterparts, due largely to a 1996 lawsuit against HBO for allegedly promoting the grey-market availability of U.S.-based satellite television providers. WIC was at the time also a significant shareholder in domestic satellite provider ExpressVu (now Bell TV). In retaliation, HBO refused to license any of its programmes to Superchannel.〔 〕 The duelling takeover bids for, and eventual split of, WIC resulted in Superchannel and MovieMax! being transferred to Corus Entertainment, which settled the HBO lawsuit and began to license programmes such as ''The Sopranos''. On April 1, 2001, Superchannel and MovieMax! were rebranded under the umbrella brand Movie Central, which consisted of six diverse channels, most of which utilized a common street-themed branding scheme: Movie Central, Adrenaline Drive (focusing on action movies), Heartland Road (focusing on romance films), Shadow Lane (focusing on horror and suspense films), Encore Avenue (focusing on classic movies), and Comic Strip (focusing on comedy films). On March 1, 2006, the sub-brands were dropped due to confusion among subscribers regarding the meanings of the channel's names; four of the channels remained under the Movie Central brand (but using numbered names rather than a combination of the parent network's name and a sub-brand, a common naming scheme for North American premium television services), and the two remaining channels became Encore Avenue, each of which are still diverse in their schedules. The Encore Avenue channels adopted a format of films from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, possibly due to the introduction of Turner Classic Movies in Canada. On November 19, 2015, Corus announced that as a result of a strategic review, it had decided to exit the pay TV business to concentrate on its national specialty channels, and would discontinue Movie Central along with Encore Avenue. As a result, Bell Media's The Movie Network (the former First Choice) will become a national service once again in early 2016. The Movie Network Encore will also expand nationally for the first time, and Bell will take over full operation of HBO Canada (currently a jointly-operated multiplex channel of both TMN and Movie Central). Although Bell is not buying the Movie Central licence, it will pay Corus C$211 million in exchange for Corus' assistance in allowing TMN's national expansion.〔 The changeover will require CRTC approval, but only to modify the Bell services' licences to allow them to operate nationally. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Movie Central」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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