Seeing Double -- And Having to Pay Big Bucks For It

      In its infinite wisdom, matched only by its infinite price increases, Time Warner Cable decided some time back to drop Turner Classic Movies from its basic cable lineup here in Los Angeles, home of the movies, and to treat us instead to ... the Golf Channel.

      You'd think that the channels that remain on basic cable would leap at the chance to fill in that entertainment chasm with their own lineups of great movies. The bottomless vault of Hollywood product suggests endless, wondrous, bold film possibilities -- theme weeks like star-of-the-week weeks, silent-picture weeks, comedy weeks, tear-jerker weeks.

       So there's no excuse for what happened Friday night, when TBS and TNT both aired -- simultaneously, at 8 p.m. -- 2005's re-re-make of  ``King Kong.''

      Basic cable movie choices are starting to get as dreary as top-40 radio, the same few dozen films over and over and over again. No offbeat older films, no black-and-white classics, no foreign films. For a couple of months' worth of cable, I could just buy those few dozen DVDs and pull the plug on Time Warner altogether.

     Dish network, where do I sign?