The serendipity of randomly catching a movie on TCM now comes with an additional price tag

Earlier this month, Comcast quietly pulled Turner Classic Movies from its basic cable subscription, making the channel available only to TV viewers who pay an additional fee to subscribe Comcast's Sports Entertainment Package.

Comcast did not respond to an inquiry from the Tribune, but on its website it does provide some background on the decision: "Viewership of TCM is low, as over 90% of our customers watch less than two movies per month. Given this, we decided to move TCM to the Sports Entertainment Package, which will help us manage programming costs that are passed on to our customers."

You can take that at face value. (TCM also declined to comment.) Or you can wonder, as TV reporter Tyler Hersko did at IndieWire, if there's something else at play. Namely, the launch of competing streaming services and the trend among media companies to "take back" their content.

TCM is owned by WarnerMedia, which is gearing up