FLICK PICKS: Turner Classic Movies turns 15 with film fan festivities

Turner Classic Movies and its guest programmer slot. All these celebs and more have picked films to co-host alongside TCM anchor Robert Osborne in the movie cabler's monthly spotlight.

Now TCM viewers get into the act, in celebration of the channel's 15th anniversary. This Monday-Friday (April 13-17), 15 winners of TCM's co-host competition will join Osborne to present their faves in prime time.

It's quite a range, encompassing old classics and new, American films and foreign, famous titles and obscure, with the programmers themselves being just as diverse -- a 14-year-old who loves Fred Astaire flicks, a 69-year-old who's a regular on TCM's online message boards, viewers from New York to California to Florida.

Check out TCM's 15th anniversary site to read all about the fan programmers and their choices.

By the way, the channel's official anniversary is Tuesday. Former owner Ted Turner flipped a switch in Times Square to launch TCM on April 14, 1994, heralded as the 100th anniversary of motion pictures first being shown in New York near that Manhattan location. Revisit TCM's start, and some of its highlights since, in TCM's "15 Years in 90 Seconds" video here.

Tuesday's prime time lineup kicks off with the same film that launched TCM 15 years ago (and the same one that led to Turner's purchase of the old MGM movie library that enabled the channel's creation) -- Gone With the Wind (Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET, TCM).