execute his original plan to air the movies on WTBS and later on his new networks Turner Network Television and Turner Classic Movies (a direct competitor to AMC). The new movie network struggled to gain carriage. By March 1986, it had only 300,000 subscribers. To solve this problem, Cablevision and CBS (which became half owner of Rainbow about a year earlier) worked out a deal with the nation's largest cable television provider, Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI). TCI gained a one-third interest in AMC (but not Bravo, Rainbow's other network) and in exchange made AMC available as an offering for most of its 3.9 million subscribers. (TCI's Liberty Media division eventually would create another premium service—Encore, which also originally focused on older films, mainly from the 1960s to the 1980s – five years later in April 1991). During its early years, it was not uncommon for AMC to host a marathon of Marx Brothers films, or show classics such as the original 1925 release of The Phantom of the Opera. In 1987, the channel began to be carried on the basic cable tiers of many cable providers. In July 1988, AMC added its first original programming: Classic Stories From Classic Stars (featuring interviews), followed later that year by Star Facts (biographies) and a mini-documentary series Making of a Classic. By 1989, AMC was available to 39 million subscribers in the U.S. On December 1, 1990, AMC began operating on a 24-hour-a-day schedule. Beginning in 1993, AMC presented an annual Film Preservation Festival to raise awareness of and funding for film preservation. Coordinated with The Film Foundation, an industry group that was founded by acclaimed director Martin Scorsese, the festival was originally conceived as a multi-day marathon presenting rare and previously lost films, many airing for the first time on television, along with behind-the-scenes reports on the technical and monetary issues faced by those engaged in archival restoration. Portions of the festival were often dedicated to all-day marathons focusing on a single performer. During its fifth anniversary year in 1998, Scorsese credited the Festival for creating "not only a greater awareness, but [...] more of an expectation now to see restored films." In 1996, curator of the Museum of Modern Art Mary Lee Bandy called the Festival "the most important public event in support of film preservation." By its tenth anniversary in 2003, the Festival had raised $2 million from the general public,