Cabler is mounting oater marathon for its pricey 'Monte' remake

NEW YORK — TNT is single-handedly trying to keep the Western, a dying showbiz breed, from ending up on Boot Hill.

The cable network will mount a 52-hour Western marathon Jan. 17-19 to launch its biggest made-for Western yet, “Monte Walsh.”

The $12.5 million remake of the 1970 film, which stars Tom Selleck, will run on three consecutive nights in between such Western classics as “The Magnificent Seven” and “The Outlaw Josey Wales.”

“Walsh” is the first original movie to get this treatment from TNT, which has previously reserved three-consecutive-night windows for hit theatricals like “The Matrix,” “The Mummy” and, in January, “The Perfect Storm.”

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The Western may be a disappearing species to most of Hollywood, but to TNT the genre represents big ratings. TNT’s competitors hate the Western mainly because it draws an older audience, which is anathema to Madison Avenue.

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But many of the 27 original Westerns TNT has scheduled throughout its 14 years of existence have pulled in such gaudy Nielsens that at least some 18 to 49 year olds have joined the old folk in the audience.

TNT keeps producing Westerns because eight of them over the years have harvested better than a 6 rating in cable homes, a stunning number, led by “Louis L’Amour’s Crossfire Trail,” with Selleck, whose 9.6 rating in January 2001 still stands as the highest-rated basic-cable movie in history.

Steve Koonin, executive VP and general manager of TNT, believes “Monte Walsh” could be another record-breaker.

There’s a lot riding on the remake, one of the most expensive basic cable movies ever commissioned ($12.5 million). Director Simon Wincer (“Lonesome Dove”) says he shot it in Calgary at least in part because “it would’ve cost $3 million more to do it in the States.”

TNT originally planned to make it a longer movie (for a four-hour timeslot). But Wincer says escalating costs made that strategy too ambitious. The final running time will fit the movie into a 2½ -hour slot.

Ironically, the movie, a considerably livened-up remake of the somber theatrical (which starred Lee Marvin), deals with the end of the cowboy era.

Subtitled “The Last Cowboy,” “Monte Walsh,” which spans more than a decade, deals with a saddle tramp who’s having a hard time adjusting to the disappearance of his livelihood as the 19th century blends into the 20th and Eastern corporations continue fencing off Western land, introducing automobiles to the West as a new and better way to get around.

The Western flourished in movies and TV in the 1940s and ’50s. During the ’60s, it fell out of favor when the culture changed dramatically, shooting down many of the sagebrush myths, says Syracuse U. media-studies chief Robert Thompson. These myths ranged, he says, from the cowboy as dignified embodiment of individuality to native Americans as untamed killers who deserved to be eliminated by the white man.

These days, viewers are more likely to get their brawls and shootouts from crimeshows or space operas. “The ‘Gunfight at the O.K. Corral’ now takes place in outer space,” says Bill Carroll, VP and director of programming for Katz TV, which represents hundreds of TV stations. notes.

He says that when Joss Whedon (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer”) wanted to do a Western for the Fox Network for 2002-03, he had to set it in the future. Young viewers weren’t fooled, and Fox canceled “Firefly” in December.

TNT is not intimidated, however, and will go on serving up its Western helpings the old-fashioned way.

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