Ordinarily, Bob Gessner has little use for arty independent films, be they edgy dramas or award-winning documentaries.

But in the case of Go Tigers, the president of Massillon Cable in Ohio says he'll make an exception.

Kenneth Carlson's Go Tigers, which was one of the most talked-about documentaries at last January's Sundance Film Festival, explores the culture of high school football in ? you guessed it ? Massillon. And, as it happens, the film is being distributed by the theatrical arm of the Independent Film Channel and will eventually wind up on that network.

While Massillon Cable doesn't include either the specialty-film-oriented Sundance Channel or Independent Film Channel on its systems, the film could well end up on IFC's Friday night programming block on sister network Bravo, which Gessner does carry.

?I could promote the hell out of the film. People here would watch it,? Gessner says. That's true even though, as he admits, ?I don't really follow [art house] films.?

In fact, independent films that once would have enjoyed an initial release at the local art house ? or perhaps gone straight to video ? are now increasingly heading to cable. Filmmakers such as Alison Anders and Barbara Kopple are seeing new work appear on general interest premium networks like Showtime and Starz Encore.

Such films give programmers the opportunity to debut fresh, often groundbreaking fare that can help brand a network and mesh with original movies and series. And filmmakers struggling to get their films released by established distributors understand that cable networks can deliver a solid audience, not to mention some return on investment.

?Most filmmakers have always felt that getting a theatrical release was the big brass ring,? says Stephan Schelanski, senior vice president of programming at Starz Encore Group. Through next month, Encore is heavily promoting My Generation, Kopple's documentary about the various Woodstock music festivals. ?There was a stigma to having your film premiere on pay television. But that is changing. A lot of producers are starting to realize the benefits of having a film premiere on cable.?

?What is happening in the [theatrical] industry, the competition for screens is so intense, the costs of releasing them theatrically is so great, and most smaller level art house films are not doing that well theatrically,? Schelanski adds. ?Producers see that it makes a lot more sense to premiere their film on cable. They get a larger audience. They know that we're going to position [the film] strong; we're going to give it a heavy rotation; we're going to promote it; and it has the chance to be seen by 15 to 20 million subscribers. Some of these small art house films might play on just five screens [nationally].?

Matthew Duda, EVP of program acquisitions and planning for Showtime Networks, adds: ?We think there's something of a match between the kind of films that are difficult to release theatrically, those with controversial subject matter and the kind of movies that we're trying to make as original programs,? Furthermore, Duda says, they are reaching out to their audience with serious, adult-themed material befitting a premium cable channel.

Even filmmakers ? who are reluctant to give up their dream of theatrical release ? are starting to come around. ?There are a lot of reasons I'd rather be coming out in a theater? than on cable, admits filmmaker Henry Bean, whose film The Believer ? which cost $1.5 million to make ? won the Grand Jury prize at Sundance and will debut on Showtime Sept. 30. ?But the fact is, more people will see it on Showtime than the best possible [theatrical] release. And different kinds of people will see it?. There are all sorts of people who are going to stumble in and see this film,? Bean says.

In fact, the changing economics of the theatrical business, along with the increasing appetite for fresh product among programmers and a more sophisticated cable audience, are driving the trend. Add to that the fact that premium networks, at least, don't need to worry whether an individual movie will rack up huge ratings; what's more important is persuading subscribers that they are getting valuable and exclusive programming.

?The edgier, more independent brand of filmmaking is starting to become accepted on cable at greater levels,? says Bill Rosendahl, VP of operations for Adelphia's Southern California region. ?There is a much greater sophistication on the part of the viewers. It becomes an exciting factor for everybody. Right now I would call this the beginning of a trend.?

Bean's story demonstrates how difficult the film market has become, even for award-winning filmmakers. His success in securing a distributor seemed assured after Sundance. After all, in the last 11 years, only one film that won the grand jury prize, the 1993 co-winner Public Access, made by a very young Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects, X-Men), failed to win a theatrical release.

But by April, Bean's film had gotten nowhere. The complicated story ? based on a true account of a brilliant young Jewish scholar whose rage and self-disgust occasioned his own anti-Semitic terrorist actions and covert involvement with a neo-Nazi cell ? provoked many viewers. The hard edge and profanity turned off a series of potential theatrical distributors. ?The content did doom me,? Bean conceded.

But executives at Showtime clearly felt otherwise. With the network's 13 million subscriber base and firm commitment to air the film five or six times during its 45-day pay TV run, Duda says a film such as The Believer could attract 2.5 million viewers, the equivalent of $10 million in theatrical revenue, the kind of numbers pulled off by a select few of the hundreds of independent titles distributed.

?I think this will continue to happen,? Duda says. ?I'm not sure it will happen every month. It's an opportunistic thing, not a business plan.?

Bean's film follows Showtime's August premiere of Alison Anders's wrenching autobiographical work about the repercussions of a violent sexual assault, Things Behind the Sun. Anders's film was first shown out of competition at Sundance.

HBO has not been as aggressive as Showtime in acquiring fiction titles, though it has ? along with sister channel Cinemax ? showcased a number of prominent Sundance Festival documentaries, such as American Hollow, Legacy, Southern Comfort and Chain Camera, in the last year. HBO's premieres tend toward action-oriented, genre-driven movies, though there are notable exceptions.

Moreover, HBO proved a cable broadcast does not automatically exclude theatrical success. Last summer, HBO premiered Henry Bromwell's offbeat film, Panic, with William H. Macy and Neve Campbell, prior to its theatrical release. This winter, the San Francisco-based Roxie Releasing earned $1 million in theatrical revenue for the picture, releasing the film on as many as 70 screens, according to Bill Banning, Roxie's CEO. Banning is also an exhibitor, whose Roxie Theatre is a prominent art house in San Francisco.

His company has had mixed results with distributing films after they have premiered on cable. In 1993, Roxie had a significant hit with Red Rock West, the Nicolas Cage film that premiered on HBO after the studio that financed and produced it, Tri-Star Pictures, lost confidence in the movie's theatrical prospects. Banning said it grossed more than $2.5 million in theaters. In 1996, Roxie attempted a similar plan with Freeway, a Reese Witherspoon movie, though it flopped in theaters. ?An independent film today, unless it has a hook of some kind, gets lost against the Hollywood product and the high-profile art films,? Banning said.

Theatrically, the money, time and resources required to market difficult specialty titles are frequently incompatible with the potential revenue. The costs involved in launching a film simultaneously in New York and Los Angeles have risen exponentially in the last decade, says Michael Barker, one of the three principals of the New York-based Sony Pictures Classics, one of the industry's leading art house distributors. His company struck gold last year with Ang Lee's Chinese-language phenomenon, the Oscar-winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Barker estimates that, on average, it costs approximately $200,000 in marketing, prints and advertising to release the top art house titles.

?It has always been hard [theatrically],? Barker says. ?Taking on a theatrical release is more costly than it was ten years ago?. Showtime has stepped up and is being very aggressive. They want to put quality films on the channel. If the filmmaker is not going to get the promise of a huge amount of money [from a theatrical distributor] and a substantial theatrical release, somebody like [Showtime] will do a high-profile launch, and there are a lot of lures to doing that,? Barker says.

According to Bean, The Believer's negative cost ? the price of production before adding costs for prints and advertising ? was $1.5 million. Duda declined to confirm a Reuters report that Showtime paid a ?high six-figure license fee? for the pay-TV rights. Bean characterized Showtime as ?very generous? and said factoring in the pay television rights and several presold European territories, the producers have already returned their initial investment. Furthermore, the film will be distributed theatrically in January, though the pay-TV deal, according to Bean, is an economically shrewd hedge.

Showtime is acquiring about eight to ten art house titles per month and still shows far many more conventional movies. The network does not disclose ratings data for its movies, a spokesperson for the network said.

Proportionally, the programming at Sundance and IFC is dominated by independent, art house titles: foreign language, American independents and documentaries.

Major premium channels Showtime and HBO are thought to pay considerably more for movies than IFC or Sundance, though according to Lisanne Skyler, a filmmaker who sold her film, Getting to Know You, to Sundance Channel, they paid an equitable figure. IFC mostly runs films after they've had theatrical releases.

As the pay television premiere of his movie approaches, Bean is confronting a range of conflicted emotions. ?My feeling is that people pay attention to a theatrical film in a way they don't with a cable film ? or at least that's the tradition. I suspect that might be changing.?

While Showtime is frugal about marketing the films ? relying on billboard advertising in Los Angeles and in-house promotion on their own network ? viewers are tuning in. ?We're finding these premiere movies have a rating above our prime-time numbers. When you add to that the press they generate, that only adds more to what we're doing,? says Duda. ?We really have an obligation to provide something extra. It brings a lot of people to the network, and they're seeing stuff that they're not getting elsewhere,? he says.

And that's what counts for operators.

?I think it's a plus, no matter how you look at it,? says Adelphia's Rosendahl. ?It adds value to cable; it adds value to Showtime; it gives viewers who have cable an opportunity to see these classy, art films that they might not be able to see theatrically or at a film festival?. For the cable operator, it gives us happy customers, which is what we want.?

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