FX Movie Channel (FXM) is an American

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channel owned by FX Networks, LLC, a subsidiary of the

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business segment and division of

The Walt Disney Company The Walt Disney Company, commonly referred to as simply Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was founded on October 16 ...

. It is the sister channel of FX and FXX. The channel's programming consists largely of movies, primarily those from the library. Since 2012, FXM has separated its film content into two distinct blocks. Its main programming focuses more on recent films and its early-morning and daytime schedule (branded as "FXM Retro") focuses on classic films. , FXM is available to approximately 32,000,000 pay television households in the United States-down from its 2019 peak of 58,000,000 households. The channel has recently been dropped in negotiations with

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in 2023 and with Verizon Fios in 2025.

History

fXM: Movies from Fox (1994–2000)

Originally intended to be titled "Fox Movie Studio" during the planning stages, the channel launched at midnight on October 31, 1994 as fXM: Movies from Fox, a name derived from its sister

cable channel Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with broa ...

FX, which debuted five months earlier on June 1. The first movie to air on fXM was the 1975 cult classic ''

The Rocky Horror Picture Show ''The Rocky Horror Picture Show'' is a 1975 independent musical comedy horror film produced by Lou Adler and Michael White, directed by Jim Sharman, and distributed by 20th Century Fox. The screenplay was written by Sharman and Richard O ...

''. Its original format focused solely on classic movies from the 20th Century Fox film library, which were presented commercial-free (and in regard to films originally released in

black-and-white Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white to produce a range of achromatic brightnesses of grey. It is also known as greyscale in technical settings. Media The history of various visual media began with black and white, ...

, uncolorized), and were generally shown without editing for content and time; the films that were broadcast were mainly releases from the 1920s to the 1980s. On February 7, 1997, FXM aired its first film production commissions of six under 12-minute films in a showcase hosted by producer-director

Michael Apted Michael David Apted (10 February 1941 – 7 January 2021) was an English television and film director and producer. Apted began working in television and directed the ''Up (film series), Up'' documentary series from 1970 to 2019). He later di ...

. Two, ''Better Late'' (directed by Jessica Yu) and ''78'' (helmed by Noah Edelson), would initially premiere at the

Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with 423,234 combined in-person and online viewership in 2023. The festival has acted ...

Fox Movie Channel (2000–2013)

The channel officially changed its name to Fox Movie Channel on March 1, 2000. On January 1, 2012, Fox Movie Channel's programming was divided into two 12-hour blocks: its main programming schedule, from 3:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time, was a commercial-free block retaining the older movies from the 20th Century Fox library. Another block, called FX Movie Channel, the other 12 hours consisted of an expanded slate of more recent feature films from Fox and some other film studios, including the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group and

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. The channel, which ran only promos for its programming as well as interstitials relating to its films, also began running traditional advertisements during the 12-hour block, which runs from the late afternoon to the early overnight hours (from 3:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m.

Eastern Time The Eastern Time Zone (ET) is a time zone encompassing part or all of 23 states in the eastern part of the United States, parts of eastern Canada, and the state of Quintana Roo in Mexico. * Eastern Standard Time (EST) is five hours behi ...

). As a result, films broadcast on the FXM block are edited to allow for commercial time, and for content. Fox Movie Channel still retained uncut and commercial-free broadcasts of its films.

FXM: FX Movie Channel (2013–present)

On March 27, 2013, Fox Movie Channel rebranded back to FXM. On January 1, 2015, FXM broke format for its first and only time, running a

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of the first season of the FX original series '' Fargo''.

High definition

FXM provides a high-definition

simulcast Simulcast (a portmanteau of "simultaneous broadcast") is the broadcasting of programs or events across more than one resolution, bitrate or medium, or more than one service on the same medium, at exactly the same time (that is, simultaneously) ...

feed that broadcasts the channel's film content in

720p 720p (720 lines progressive) is a progressive HD signal format with 720 horizontal lines/1280 columns and an aspect ratio (AR) of 16:9, normally known as widescreen HD (1.78:1). All major HD broadcasting standards (such as SMPTE 292M) includ ...

, the company's default transmission format.

References

External links

* official website * official website * website {{U.S. movie television channels English-language television stations in the United States

Movie A film, also known as a movie or motion picture, is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally, sinc ...

Disney television networks Movie channels in the United States Television channels and stations established in 1994 Television networks in the United States 1994 establishments in the United States