AMC began in late 1984 as American Movie Classics, a Rainbow Media channel showing pre-1970 Hollywood films without commercials. Rainbow Media was the programming arm of Charles Dolan's Cablevision, started in late 1980, and for two decades AMC was a library movie service sold as part of the cable bundle. The Dolan family still controls the company: Class B shares carry ten votes each, and at the end of 2025 the Dolan Family Group held about 79% of total voting power.
Mad Men, Breaking Bad and the move into original drama
The change came in the 2000s, when the channel began carrying advertising and, under chief executive Josh Sapan, started ordering original scripted series. Mad Men premiered in July 2007 and won the Emmy for outstanding drama series four years running. Breaking Bad followed in January 2008. Both were made by outside studios, Lionsgate and Sony Pictures Television, so AMC had the network window rather than the underlying rights.
Why The Walking Dead mattered more than the Emmys
The Walking Dead, which premiered on October 31, 2010, was different: AMC owned it. That ownership is why the company could build spin-offs, sell the franchise internationally, and, in July 2026, license co-exclusive global streaming rights to all seven Walking Dead Universe series, 371 episodes, to Netflix for $500 million in fees over five years, with the rights reverting afterwards and the shows staying on AMC+.
The cable bundle stopped paying
Affiliate fees were the company's foundation, and they are going away. Domestic affiliate revenue fell 13% to $588 million in FY2025 and another 17% in the second quarter of 2026 as basic subscribers cancelled. Domestic advertising fell 15% to $477 million in FY2025 on lower linear ratings and weaker pricing. Group revenue was $2.31 billion in FY2025, down 4.5%, against a $399.5 million impairment charge taken in 2024 on the value of the cable networks themselves.
Targeted streaming instead of one general service
The response was not a single service competing with Netflix but several aimed at specific audiences: Shudder for horror, launched in 2015; Acorn TV and ALLBLK, acquired with RLJ Entertainment in 2018; HIDIVE for anime, acquired with Sentai in 2022; Sundance Now, All Reality, and the AMC+ bundle that sits on top. Streaming revenue grew 12% to $677 million in FY2025 and passed affiliate fees as the largest revenue component of the domestic segment. Subscribers did not grow, holding at 10.4 million through the year, so the growth came from price increases.
What the company looks like now
The company renamed itself AMC Global Media on April 8, 2026, filing amended articles of incorporation in Nevada and keeping the AMCX ticker. It employed 1,738 people at the end of 2025 and generated $272.4 million of free cash flow, cutting total debt to $1.78 billion from $2.34 billion. The plan is unglamorous and specific: raise prices on services with loyal audiences, renew carriage with the distributors that remain, and turn an owned library into cash through licensing.
