Sony Pictures Television plans to launch two cable channels

Responding to the changing revenue picture for movies, Sony Pictures Television plans to launch two movie channels this year to capitalize on the studio’s extensive film library.

Sony Pictures Movies HD would be Sony’s first wholly owned cable channel in the U.S. In recent years, the Japanese-owned studio has focused on international markets, building a portfolio of 122 channel feeds that are available in 140 countries at a time when rival entertainment companies aimed primarily at domestic audiences.

“That’s where the growth was, and most people hadn’t been there yet,” Andy Kaplan, networks president for Sony Pictures Television, said Tuesday of the company’s overseas strategy.

Now Sony is looking to tap the lucrative, but crowded, U.S. cable TV channel market, as other segments of the business begin to dry up.

“They have been very successful internationally with their channels, but in the U.S. they have not had the leverage of the other media conglomerates, which have a bunch of different cable channels,” said Derek Baine, television analyst for the consulting firm SNL Kagan. “Perhaps they are doing this because the market to sell movies to broadcast and cable networks has been so bad.”

The channel, scheduled to launch Oct. 1, is designed to exploit Sony’s large film library, which includes such older titles as “ Philadelphia” and “Taxi Driver,” and to offer cable and satellite television operators another high-definition channel to market as part of their HD packages.

An additional source of revenue from older film titles should help Sony offset lower DVD sales and income from TV networks that are paying less for the rights to air movies.

“This is a diversification strategy,” Kaplan said. “We see this as incremental, growing the overall pie, and not as a replacement for one source of revenue or another. The channel business is a terrific, constant source of revenue in an otherwise fluctuating marketplace.”

The Sony movie channel would not be a premium pay service that offers costly original programming to compete against the likes of HBO, Starz or Showtime — or an upstart like Epix, a joint venture of Viacom’s Paramount Pictures, Lionsgate Entertainment and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Instead, Sony’s venture is expected to be less ambitious in scope, akin to the Universal HD and the MGM HD channels that primarily play older titles from those studios’ film libraries.

Sony will continue to funnel its recent movie releases to Starz.

Sony owns a stake in the Game Show Network, and it has been experimenting with an advertising-supported online video service, Crackle, which allows people to watch movies and TV shows, as well as series “webisodes.” Some short-form content from Crackle could find its way to the movie channel, Kaplan said.

The studio also is seeking to upgrade the horror-movie outlet, FearNet, into a full-fledged cable network from its current status as an online service and video-on-demand channel. FearNet is a joint venture among Sony, Lionsgate and cable operator Comcast Corp.

Although FearNet is available in about 28 million homes, TV video-on-demand channels have earned mixed reviews from consumers. Sony and Lionsgate also are aiming for an Oct. 1 launch for the FearNet movie channel.

meg.james@latimes.com