shut down during the prior decade). Initially, Encore focused on movies released primarily during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, with some releases from the 1950s mixed in; the channel was formatted similarly to American Movie Classics at the time, with hosted introductions leading into the movie presentations. Breaks between films on Encore during its early years were quite lively, consisting less of promotions and more of trivia and nostalgia, fitting in with Encore's motto "The Movies of Your Life." The channel even ran an interstitial during breaks within its daytime schedule that informed viewers about programs that were scheduled to air on competing premium channels that evening in prime time. The channel had initially broadcast films from Warner Bros. Pictures (owned by Time Warner, which ironically is the parent company of rival pay services HBO and Cinemax), Columbia Pictures/TriStar Pictures, Orion Pictures, 20th Century Fox, The Samuel Goldwyn Company, Paramount Pictures (which also ironically came under ownership of Showtime and The Movie Channel's then-parent company Viacom in 1994), Turner Entertainment, and MGM/United Artists. The channel was formatted as a "mini-pay" service, available to subscribers for a $1 monthly fee. TCI initially offered Encore as a negative option, in which customers were required to notify TCI if they declined to subscribe to the channel full-time after an introductory offer, or TCI would automatically add on a $1 charge to their monthly bill, which would have then increased to $4.95 per month by May 1992. The negative option fee led to lawsuits filed against TCI by ten states, eventually causing the company to back away from utilizing the billing method for the channel. Many other cable providers were reluctant to offer Encore in its early years due to concerns that it would cannibalize subscriptions of other premium services. However, Sie positioned the channel as such that would bolster the growth of what had been a lagging pay television industry, as premium channels had been seeing a steady decline in subscribers overall since the late 1980s. Around the time of its launch, there was some debate as to whether Viacom or TCI originally conceived the idea for Encore; Viacom executives insisted that TCI lifted part of the idea from Viacom-owned Showtime Networks (which would launch a similarly formatted mini-pay service, Flix, in August 1992). In a 1991 interview with Multichannel News, John Sie said that TCI brought up the Encore network concept as