What channel is cool enough to show MST reruns?

[angilasman]

I was looking at that thread linked from a few posts up. Why would Sci Fi and Comedy Central still have the airing rights? and certainly those rights would expire at some point right? This is from the same forum that thinks Sandy Frank still has a monicum of rights to the Gamera films so I definitely call up any litigious info from here in to question.

I was merely saying that the PD episodes alone from the entire run of the show would certainly make enough for a full season. It could be run through one epp a week, and then could go into an "episode the last Friday of every month" type situation. I bet it would get good ratings for them, considering TCM isn't a ratings whore.

The reasons this thought sprang to mind was a) because of their much advertised cult movie showcase hosted by Rob Zombie and b) their showing of The Dick Cavvett Show, proving that they will show an old television show that deals with the movie industry (albeit Mr. Cavett and MST3K are dealing with much different sides of it) and c)TCM is the only channel cool enough to do it.

[vanhagar3000]

You know I seriously think we may be able to get G4 to do it.

Look, I'm not saying they're going to play it five times a week, but maybe they'll show it once a week with the small amount of public domain episodes they can get, and maybe a few cheapie movies. There only needs to be 13 PD episodes for it to run weekly, so they don't have any reruns in a quarter. G4 likes cult TV, like all the Star Trek shows, and Arrested Development.

Plus I'm beginning to think the TV rights may not be so expensive. I know there isn't a ton on DVD, but that's a whole different media. When was the last time you saw 2 MST3K movies in a week on free TV? They use to be all over the place until cable took over, then MST3K became their last bastion. Maybe they're willinging to make a small extra buck, especially if they're DVD sales haven't been that good.

Yeah, we all were told that they weren't renewing the rights, because the rights were too expensive. But that line was from Comedy Central. They lost the season one episode sometime in 1995? But remember, they never expected to show those again anyway. The rest of the episodes that were from were lost in 1996, which by that time CC was shoving MST3K out the door. The only time they really lost an episode was Catalina Caper. Same thing for the SCi-Fi network, they didn't start losing rights until 1999 when the show was cancelled with the exception of Gorgo (episode 812 was pulled likely for legal reasons).

[samtaco]

How about Lifetime?

[jjb3k]

Well, if we're giving it serious consideration, then here's a compilation of episodes with public domain movies (it might be a little out of date, I'm not sure)...

101 "The Crawling Eye"
102 "The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy"
103 "Mad Monster"
105 "The Corpse Vanishes"
106 "The Crawling Hand"
107 "Robot Monster"
108 "The Slime People"
201 "Rocketship XM"
206 "Ring of Terror"
210 "King Dinosaur"
211 "First Spaceship on Venus"
320 "The Unearthly"
321 "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians"
323 "The Castle of Fu Manchu"
402 "The Giant Gila Monster"
404 "Teenagers from Outer Space"
406 "Attack of the Giant Leeches"
407 "The Killer Shrews"
408 "Hercules Unchained"
409 "The Indestructible Man"
410 "Hercules Against the Moon Men"
411 "The Magic Sword"
412 "Hercules and the Captive Women"
414 "Tormented"
415 "The Beatniks"
417 "Crash of the Moons"
418 "Attack of the The Eye Creatures"
419 "The Rebel Set"
423 "Bride of the Monster"
424 "Manos: The Hands of Fate"
502 "Hercules"
503 "Swamp Diamonds"
506 "Eegah"
507 "I Accuse My Parents"
511 "Gunslinger"
512 "Mitchell"
513 "The Brain That Wouldn't Die"
515 "The Wild World of Batwoman"
518 "The Atomic Brain"
520 "Radar Secret Service"
521 "Santa Claus"
602 "Invasion USA"
605 "Colossus and the Headhunters"
610 "The Violent Years"
621 "The Beast of Yucca Flats"
623 "The Amazing Transparent Man"
624 "Samson vs. the Vampire Women"
701 "Night of the Blood Beast"
806 "The Undead"
807 "Terror from the Year 5000"
810 "The Giant Spider Invasion"
908 "The Touch of Satan"
909 "Gorgo"
912 "The Screaming Skull"
1007 "Track of the Moon Beast"
1009 "Hamlet"

So it'd be a heck of a lot more than just one season's worth of shows, with a decent amount of classic episodes available too.

[fanliorel]

G4 popped immediately to my mind also. Not that it's that great a network, but still, they're the only channel I'd describe as "mainstream-underground" for people who want the best of both those worlds, and in my experiences msties kinda fit that mold.

Spike sucks on the other hand, don't ever put mst3k and spike in the same sentence.

....Doh! :S

[XerxesTheCat]

I think the main issue with "airing only public domain episodes", is that there may still be a problem airing a PD movie, or it may not be PD after all.

Gorgo is public domain, and SCI Fi only aired it once because Gorgo, the character, is under copyright.

And there's the possibility of a PD movie, that's not really PD. For the longest time, we thought BLOODLUST was PD, and many Dollar Store outlets thought so too, as that movie was frequent in their DVD sections (I should note, that at least one of their Bloodlust casings have a cast list that actually include Mike Nelson and Tom Servo!). But as it turns out Bloodlust was under copyright resulting in Rhino losing the rights.