Turner Classic Movies Site?

[Salty Dog]

Not sure if this is the right place to post...but what has happened to the TCM site? It's terrible! The monthly schedule is only available for the current month, and it is very bare bones, with no descriptions of the film.

Makes it a bit harder to plan your DVR-ing....

Heck, I may actually get a subscription to their magazine again, if it is still available.

[spadeneal]

They've taken down their "Suggest a Movie" feature, although it is supposed to return. I have had a lot of problems getting into my account there lately. I don't know what's wrong; it's a mess.

spadeneal

[Gary Newman]

Getting us to subscribe to their magazine may actually be a point of it, although I recall when I used to subscribe there were frequent months when it would arrive late, or not at all. Customer service was always apologetic, and would send the missing issue, but by then there would be no point.

My guess is that the main reason is to force people to spend more time on the site, with more exposure to its commercial offerings. Sundance and IFC have both followed similar routes.

[drednm]

the movie description are just blurbs from Maltin's fairly worthless book, complete with his ratings.

everything on TCM is now a "tie in" with some other site.

[CoffeeDan]

Not sure if this is the right place to post...but what has happened to the TCM site? It's terrible! The monthly schedule is only available for the current month, and it is very bare bones, with no descriptions of the film.

Come on, SD, you're not trying. If you click "Day/Month" at the top of the page, it'll bring up calendar pages for the next three months. Click on any date, and it'll give you the schedule.

Clicking on "Expand" to the right of each entry on the schedule brings up a wealth of information -- description of the film (synopsis, cast, director), running time, TV rating, plus links to articles and trailers if they are available. You can also set a reminder from there. And if you click on the title of the film itself, it takes you to that film's page in the TCM Movie Database.

I know that TCM took down the "Suggest a Movie" feature because so many people were abusing it, but a more secure, user-friendly page will be coming back soon.

And I really like the addition of reviews from Leonard Maltin's film guides. In a way, I think Maltin's guide is more useful as a database rather than a book (although I still like it that way), so this is a welcome addition to the site. While Maltin's movie guide is the best of the lot, the only problem with it -- in fact, the problem with any general reference guide -- is that people take the ratings and reviews too seriously, and that can prevent them from seeing a lot of worthwhile movies. In some ways, I like Danny Peary's books a lot better, because he doesn't rate movies, but simply tells you the best and worst things about them, and lets you make up your own mind. His OOP Guide for the Film Fanatic desparately needs to be updated and on every serious movie lover's bookshelf.

[Salty Dog]

Not sure if this is the right place to post...but what has happened to the TCM site? It's terrible! The monthly schedule is only available for the current month, and it is very bare bones, with no descriptions of the film.

Come on, SD, you're not trying. If you click "Day/Month" at the top of the page, it'll bring up calendar pages for the next three months. Click on any date, and it'll give you the schedule.

Well, that's a ton more work then it was...I would download the entire next month's schedule and go through and mark movies worth DVR'ing all at once. Then every few days I would set the recorder.....Time Warner only lets you schedule a weeks recording at a time.

[CoffeeDan]

Not sure if this is the right place to post...but what has happened to the TCM site? It's terrible! The monthly schedule is only available for the current month, and it is very bare bones, with no descriptions of the film.

Come on, SD, you're not trying. If you click "Day/Month" at the top of the page, it'll bring up calendar pages for the next three months. Click on any date, and it'll give you the schedule.

Well, that's a ton more work then it was...I would download the entire next month's schedule and go through and mark movies worth DVR'ing all at once. Then every few days I would set the recorder.....Time Warner only lets you schedule a weeks recording at a time.

You're still not trying. All you have to do is click on "Month Schedule" from the Schedule drop-down menu at the top of the page, and click "Print" when the schedule page comes up. That function is basically unchanged from the old TCM web pages. How much simpler do you want it?

[silentfilm]

The new site takes some getting used to. And the "monthly" schedule doesn't list everything, like http://i.cdn.turner.com/v5cache/TCM/Fil ... hedule.pdf. Basically, they don't have the detailed list of all the monthly films anymore. You can only view them weekly.

[Salty Dog]

Come on, SD, you're not trying. If you click "Day/Month" at the top of the page, it'll bring up calendar pages for the next three months. Click on any date, and it'll give you the schedule.

Well, that's a ton more work then it was...I would download the entire next month's schedule and go through and mark movies worth DVR'ing all at once. Then every few days I would set the recorder.....Time Warner only lets you schedule a weeks recording at a time.

You're still not trying. All you have to do is click on "Month Schedule" from the Schedule drop-down menu at the top of the page, and click "Print" when the schedule page comes up. That function is basically unchanged from the old TCM web pages. How much simpler do you want it?

It's totally not true that it is unchanged. First of all, until a week or so ago, there were detailed descriptions of every movie. Now they are very bare boned, with much less info. Secondly, you previously had the option of not only printing the current month, but the next month, and the month after that.

Don't try to explain to me how the site has not changed, I've been using it very diligently for years, and this is a major downgrade.

[gatester]

Perhaps they decided not to give away their schedule so far in advance. It was great while it lasted. The content of TCM has watered down as well. If you like Gidget twice a month you're in heaven.

[The Blackbird]

All I can say about the new look is "ugh." It was bad enough before having trouble all the time logging into the message board...

[Gagman 66]

Aaron,

Hey, I got you letter yesterday, but I haven't had a chance to read it well yet. Glad to see that you are back On-line. Don't forget about Fragments-"Rarely Seen Treasures" on Sunday.

[Gary Newman]

I printed out TCM’s May schedule, doing it one week at a time, and—surprise, surprise—the results were not what you see online, but very similar to the old printed schedule format, complete with the descriptions. The schedules of some of the days towards the end of the month were scrambled and had missing blocks of time, but those days printeded out correctly when you did them individually. You can see this without printing by going to print preview.

[mndean]

I guess I was fortunate to get May and June before they updated the site. I agree that this change was meant to make people come back repeatedly. It won't make me buy anything, if that's their hope. TCM really needs to lose those Maltin reviews, too. I don't think they're much help and can actually cause viewers not to watch an interesting film due to a low rating.

[John Inglesant]

Don't try to explain to me how the site has not changed, I've been using it very diligently for years, and this is a major downgrade.

Absolutely it is! And I treasure Maltin's opinions equally with those "Employee Picks." Since these gimmicks aren't suggesting themselves, finding something useful to do must be a problem among certain TCM staffers.