10 Messages
TCM on Direct TV Streaming
I don’t think it’s fair that I pay for a package that includes TCM and just lately, I get notifications that the movie is not allowed to be shown in my zipcode or The owners of this movie do not allow this movie to be shown on this channel. I wonder who has been buying TCM movies?
Direct TV satellite is much better but where I moved, we can’t have a satellite.
What’s going on?
Accepted Solution
Socalstreamer818
6 Messages
24 days ago
Sadly a lot of TCM's rights to movies date back to the 90s when there was no thought of such a thing as streaming so it wasn't included in their rights to them. Add on that their content library has been sold by their owner so they retain rights to use it in some ways and not others and you have a bad situation.
What happened then is you have a mixture of they simply don't have the legal rights to do it under the contract they signed and either they don't want to bother with the legal costs of negotiating a new contract or in some cases the legal entity they did business with may no longer exist, have been merged, absorbed, vanished into legal obscurity and it would take significant work to find and verify the current owners for some works (this would be a minority though a real problem for some very old works).
The major problem is many studios and rightholders have sold rights to old movies in particular already to various streaming services, exclusive streaming rights that is. So though TCM can show say a Universal movie from 1967 on cable/satellite, Universal may have sold the streaming rights exclusively to a major streaming service or even a minor one like one of the many ad supported F.A.S.T. models. TCM isn't willing to outbid these people for what unfortunately is a minority of their customers.
This issue does exist with competitors to Directv Stream who all have black-outs on this channel for select movies due to rights issues. Nothing Directv can do, it's a TCM issue which means Warner-Discovery.
If you absolutely must have access to all movies on TCM then the only solution is traditional satellite/cable which is covered under old rights agreements. It tends to not be that many movies though, maybe a handful each month.
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bcbsncjlj
ACE - Expert
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5.9K Messages
25 days ago
Content is controlled by the broadcaster, not DirecTV. TCM is one broadcaster that limits streaming viewing on a lot of its content.
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AlidaMC
10 Messages
25 days ago
How can I found out who the Broadcaster is? This never happened with DirectTV satellite. Why should I pay more money and get less content?
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bcbsncjlj
ACE - Expert
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5.9K Messages
25 days ago
Satellite is totally different then streaming. Media rights for a lot of TCM content was established before streaming even existed.
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TexasBrit
ACE - Expert
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14.1K Messages
25 days ago
TCM does not have streamin rights for many popular movies, this is nothing to do with directv. TCM does not have streaming rights, although they can show them on satellite. I assume when TCM negotiated broadcasr rights they never tthought they would ever need to stream them.
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JJK1954
20 Messages
24 days ago
It is incredible how convoluted the "Rights" issue is. Sad, actually. No thoughts about the consumer. Just about $$$$$$
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AlidaMC
10 Messages
24 days ago
When a movie won’t show in my zipcode, what’s the reason for that?
I really preferred my satellite but when I moved, I had no choice because I live on the 14th floor of a high rise. It also is way more expensive. I do a Google search to see if those movies are streaming somewhere else and they never show up anywhere.
This is just a sad thing for me because classic film is one of the things I watch the most.
Thanks for the explanation.
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