Z Channel

For the fourth time this decade, Jerry Harvey is wondering what the future holds for Z Channel--the cable programming service he helped make popular. The consortium that bought Group W--which owns the Z Channel--a year ago, announced Thursday that the service was up for sale. Group W Cable executive Joel Cohen said Monday that "a lot of people came out of the woodwork" since then.

I have, I think, 33 pay movie channels, and while it would be fashionable to say there's never anything on, this isn't entirely accurate. Better to say that there are tons of mediocre commercial movies that play ad nauseam, and that you learn to nosh on, like leftover lasagna. I enjoy cold lasagna the next day, and I like the reliable mediocrity of my pay movie services, because it nicely fits the level of concentration I typically feel like devoting to a movie at 10:30 on a weeknight.

Negotiations for the purchase of the Z Channel by Cable-vision Systems Corp., a New York-based cable operator that owns a network of regional sports channels, are continuing, but no deal has been finalized, a spokesman for Z Channel president Jack Williams said Thursday. Cablevision's SportsChannel America, a recently launched sports network with aspirations of competing with ESPN, owns sports channels in New York, New England, Chicago, Florida and Philadelphia.

"You don't know you're living in a golden age when you're in it," declares filmmaker Alexander Payne in the documentary "Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession."

The Z Channel movie programming service, owned by Group W and available to many cable subscribers in the Greater Los Angeles area, is up for sale, company officials announced Wednesday. Group W chief operating officer Joel Cohen, in announcing that Z Channel was on the block, said that the company wanted to "concentrate efforts" on development of its cable systems throughout the United States.

Watching the 1974 British film of David Halliwell's mid-60s play "Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs," which makes its American premiere with a week of airings on Z Channel starting today at 2:30 p.m., it's possible to imagine why on the stage it was hailed as the first attempt to "show us, from the inside, what is bubbling beneath the Cavalier locks, the frosty scowls, the hairy great-coats and the military jeans of the new young."

Owners of Z Channel, a small but popular pay television service in Los Angeles, on Monday filed suit in federal court accusing Time Inc.'s Home Box Office and four major Hollywood studios of unlawful restraint of trade. In its 25-page complaint, Z Channel contended that HBO, the nation's largest pay television company, "has secured or coerced" the cooperation of MGM/UA Telecommunications, Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox Film Corp. and Warner Bros.

First came the addition of sports--Dodger games, Angel games, Clipper games, even Loyola Marymount games. Now, in another jolt for its serious movie-buff subscribers, the Z Channel has discontinued its quirky and informative monthly program guide. This month's edition of the nearly 15-year-old Z Magazine will be the last--a victim of cost considerations. But that may not be the worst of it for devotees of the Z Channel's eclectic mix of movies old and new.

Films such as "Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession" and "Born Into Brothels" represent but two entries in an especially strong lineup for the eighth annual InFACT Theatrical Documentary Showcase. The festival, presented by the International Documentary Assn., includes 17 jury-selected films and runs from Friday through Aug. 26 at the ArcLight. The films will play in rotation so that every day each one will play during a different time slot.

On Jan. 12 came word that a new sports and movie pay-cable channel would begin operating in the Los Angeles area in April and would carry 35 home Dodger games and 35 home Angel games. Since then, the people involved in this project, which began as joint venture between American Cablesystems and Philadelphia-based Spectacor, have been working without much fanfare toward a target date of April 3, the day of the final Freeway Series game.

Films such as "Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession" and "Born Into Brothels" represent but two entries in an especially strong lineup for the eighth annual InFACT Theatrical Documentary Showcase. The festival, presented by the International Documentary Assn., includes 17 jury-selected films and runs from Friday through Aug. 26 at the ArcLight. The films will play in rotation so that every day each one will play during a different time slot.

The Z Channel had been gone six years by the time the Los Angeles Film Festival was inaugurated in 1995. But in some ways they are kindred spirits in their presentation of films that enthusiasts may not see anywhere else. It is only appropriate that the two entities are brought together with a screening of Xan Cassavetes' "Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession." This fascinating documentary spins the parallel tales of the influential L.A.

With reference to the June 25 article "The Death of Z Channel--What Now?," I was sorry to read no mention of the birth of the Z Channel. Perhaps some readers might be interested in how it all came about. The Z Channel was the brainchild of myself, the first (1974-76) programmer; General John Atwood, president of Theta Cable, and George Storer Jr., a Theta Cable executive. Incidentally, the name, Z Channel, was thought up by Hal Kaufman, who headed the advertising agency Theta used, and who replaced me as programming head when I went to 20th Century Fox. Kaufman hired Jerry Harvey as his assistant, and when he became ill, Harvey took over.

Sports? You want sports? Cable's got sports. So many non-stop athletic contests, in fact, that the average fan might just die of exhaustion in front of the TV set. Sports programming in Southern California has exploded. Today, thanks to cable, any fan of any sport--from basketball to billiards to baseball--can have a front-row seat in living-room comfort. In addition to the decade-old, all-sports national cable channel, Connecticut-based ESPN, two Los Angeles-based sports channels have popped up on cable during the past four years.

With each passing year, the high cost of top sports talent is being met more and more out of TV rights fees, according to cable sports executives. There are currently 20 Major League Baseball players earning $2 million or more a year, including the Dodgers' Eddie Murray and Orel Hershiser. The Lakers' Magic Johnson earns more than $3 million a year and, in one of the most highly publicized contract negotiations of the decade, Wayne Gretzky became a Los Angeles King last September for a cool $3 million a year.

There'll never be another Z Channel. It was one-of-a-kind television, shaped by a personal vision and guided by eclectic tastes. But there are other pay-TV and basic-cable channels that Z viewers can turn to, even if their tastes run to offbeat films, little-known works of famous directors and foreign films with sensible subtitles instead of out-of-sync dubbing. They just won't find everything in one place anymore. Here's a viewer's guide to the other cable channels that primarily run movies: Mainstream movies.

The Z Channel, Los Angeles' homegrown pay-TV service, has on its schedule this week a rare 1930 movie starring two then-unknown actors in their first feature-film roles: Spencer Tracy and Humphrey Bogart. Jerry Harvey, Z Channel director of programming and a devout fan of director John Ford, had been searching for the film, "Up the River," since the early 1970s, when he ran the Beverly Canon Theatre in Beverly Hills. But it wasn't until June that Harvey turned over the right stone.

Z Channel--the quirky and acclaimed Los Angeles-area cable-TV service that for 15 years has specialized in an eclectic mix of old, new and foreign movie fare--is being acquired for an undisclosed sum by a New York-based cable firm whose programming consists largely of news and sports. Rainbow, the programming subsidiary of Cablevision Systems Corp., will take over Z Channel on March 16.

When Henry Fonda rides off into the sunset at the end of "My Darlin' Clementine" on Z Channel Thursday night, he'll be taking a piece of Los Angeles TV history with him. The eclectic Z Channel, programmed for film lovers of all stripes, is being shuttered in favor of an all-sports service from the new owners, New York-based Cablevision Systems Corp. and NBC. The John Ford film, Z's last telecast as Z Channel, is a sentimental farewell: The film was a favorite of Jerry Harvey, the passionate but troubled programmer who was the driving force behind Z. The switch to SportsChannel Los Angeles is the final sad passage in what has been a tragic 15 months for Los Angeles' beloved home-grown pay service.

Who is that doing the sports segments on Channel 9 this week? He may look like Clark Kent, but he's really Kurt Rambis. Rambis, the former Laker and current Charlotte Hornet who still calls Manhattan Beach home, was a guest reporter for Channel 9 during some Laker playoff games. He did well enough to be invited back this week to fill in for vacationing Scott St. James as sports anchor on the nightly newscasts. So why did the station pick Rambis? "They couldn't afford anyone good," he said, laughing.