Turner Classic Movies Shutting Down Fan-Favorite Programming This Month

TCM Underground, a program on the classic-movies network which focused on cult classics and hard-to-find movies,w ill shut down this week. The final episode will air tomorrow (February 24), and then the program and its social media feeds will apparently shut down permanently. TCM Underground is a late-night showcase, which was developed by former TCM marketing director Eric Weber and originally hosted by Rob Zombie. Weber was in charge of picking the movies from 2005 until late 2006 or early 2007, when then-TCM programmer Millie De Chirico took over the role. She held it until she was laid off in December.

In the announcement, posted as an image to social media, TCM Underground thanked fans for their support, as well as De Chirico personally. While the announcement promises to showcase the kind of films that flourished on Underground, there is no specific program that is going to be carrying that water.

You can see the announcement below.

The series was periodically moved around or pre-empted, but has been a staple of the lineup for years. It launched ostensibly as a way to bring younger viewers into TCM, which has an older-skewing audience, but in the time since, not only has TCM added more content with some youth appeal, but cable as a whole has started to age up, with many younger viewers cutting the cord.

At the same time as TCM Underground is wrapping up, its mision to bring genre films into the mainstream and offer them some credibility among "serious" cinemaphiles seems to be doing pretty well. The Critics Choice Awards launched their Super Awards three years ago, celebrating sci-fi, fantasy, superhero, and other big blockbuster type movies.

Per the show's Wikipedia page, "the cult films featured in TCM Underground belong to a number of genres, including but not limited to blaxploitation films (Coffy, Darktown Strutters, The Mack), horror, slasher, and giallo films (Let's Scare Jessica to Death, Black Christmas, Hatchet for the Honeymoon), and counterculture films (An American Hippie in Israel, Ciao! Manhattan, Blue Sunshine)."

We tried to get an official synopsis from the TCM website, but it appears the landing page for TCM Underground has already been discontinued and points to an error page.