'You Should Be Worried About What's Going On At Turner Classic Movies' (npr.org) 32
In an opinion piece for NPR, guest host and TV critic on NPR's Fresh Air, David Bianculli, raises concerns about Discovery CEO David Zaslav's track record and the future of Turner Classic Movies (TCM) under his leadership. Here's an excerpt from his piece: When the dismissal was announced recently of most of the people who have guided Turner Classic Movies brilliantly for years -- the programmers, the producers of special material, even the executives who plan the TCM film festivals and party cruises -- many people in Hollywood reacted like there'd been a death in the family. Because, to people who really love movies, that's what the news felt like. [...] Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, in explaining his TCM changes, has said that, among other things, he wants to have filmmakers appear on TCM to curate and present movies of their choosing. Nothing wrong with that. Except you don't have to replace your current management team to make that happen -- and besides, it's already happening. Earlier this year, when Steven Spielberg was promoting his new autobiographical movie The Fabelmans, TCM host Ben Mankiewicz had Spielberg on to select, present and talk about three movies of his choice.
The team that's been running TCM for years has been serving up treats like this with regularity, and with exceptional taste. There are pockets on the schedule for silent movies, for underground films, for film noir, for musicals, and so much more. And if you stay tuned between movies -- which you should -- you get even more treats. Salutes of actors by fellow actors. Short features on costume design and the uncomfortable but illuminating history of blackface in the movies. Some films are presented in newly restored form. Others are newly discovered and presented as the gems they are -- and TCM occasionally revives and showcases rare live television dramas, too. You can imagine how much I love that.
Zaslav says the TCM channel is on all the time in his office, too, and he's saying all the right things about valuing the curation of film as well as film itself. But Zaslav already has just shut down his overseas equivalent of Turner Classic Movies in the U.K. And he's the guy who, since taking over the reins at Warner Bros. Discovery, already has turned HBO Max into just Max, which makes no sense -- devaluing his own HBO brand. Zaslav's altered that Max streaming service so that, while a link to a TCM sub-menu does appear, it's buried way down in the menu. What's worse, its highlighted TCM movie offerings are almost all of the more recent, filmed in color, variety. It's presenting only a tepid taste of what TCM offers on its own 24-hour cable service. Zaslav also, since becoming CEO, has overseen the rapid, clumsy devaluation of CNN, by making poorly received moves like that Donald Trump town hall. In Zaslav's short time on the job, he's already considerably damaged CNN, one of Turner's more brilliant network ideas. I fear, with Turner Classic Movies, Zaslav is about to weaken another -- but I'd love to be proven wrong.
The team that's been running TCM for years has been serving up treats like this with regularity, and with exceptional taste. There are pockets on the schedule for silent movies, for underground films, for film noir, for musicals, and so much more. And if you stay tuned between movies -- which you should -- you get even more treats. Salutes of actors by fellow actors. Short features on costume design and the uncomfortable but illuminating history of blackface in the movies. Some films are presented in newly restored form. Others are newly discovered and presented as the gems they are -- and TCM occasionally revives and showcases rare live television dramas, too. You can imagine how much I love that.
Zaslav says the TCM channel is on all the time in his office, too, and he's saying all the right things about valuing the curation of film as well as film itself. But Zaslav already has just shut down his overseas equivalent of Turner Classic Movies in the U.K. And he's the guy who, since taking over the reins at Warner Bros. Discovery, already has turned HBO Max into just Max, which makes no sense -- devaluing his own HBO brand. Zaslav's altered that Max streaming service so that, while a link to a TCM sub-menu does appear, it's buried way down in the menu. What's worse, its highlighted TCM movie offerings are almost all of the more recent, filmed in color, variety. It's presenting only a tepid taste of what TCM offers on its own 24-hour cable service. Zaslav also, since becoming CEO, has overseen the rapid, clumsy devaluation of CNN, by making poorly received moves like that Donald Trump town hall. In Zaslav's short time on the job, he's already considerably damaged CNN, one of Turner's more brilliant network ideas. I fear, with Turner Classic Movies, Zaslav is about to weaken another -- but I'd love to be proven wrong.
Surprise Ousting Soon? (Score:3, Interesting)
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he was serious about cleaning house and restoring customer faith
Cleaning house? Restoring customer faith? We're talking about an entertainment company, what kind of faith do customers need to have in it? They're either entertained or they're not.
It looks like Chapek made some fumbles, but he was suddenly replaced because Disney+ had been a big focus of his and there was a surprise earnings report by Netflix which caused investors to sour on streaming services in general. So the billions that Disney had spent on that service now suddenly seemed like a bad move. And th
Re:Surprise Ousting Soon? (Score:5, Insightful)
he was serious about cleaning house and restoring customer faith
It looks like Chapek made some fumbles, but he was suddenly replaced because Disney+ had been a big focus of his and there was a surprise earnings report by Netflix which caused investors to sour on streaming services in general. So the billions that Disney had spent on that service now suddenly seemed like a bad move. And the second reason was that Bob Iger was looking to get another job elsewhere and the Disney board wanted to grab him before someone else did.
Some fumbles? One could argue that he was actively sabotaging the Disney brand with his stupid decisions. It wasn't just Disney+, he messed with the theme park formula.
I can't speak to all of the Disney parks, but he made Disney World much worse. When you flew to Florida and landed at the airport, you didn't have to go to baggage claim, Disney employees did that. You didn't have to lug around your luggage. Disney employees did that. You didn't have to worry about transportation to the resort. Disney employees did that. You and your family could pick slots for rides a month before, and when you landed you could just go ride rides and come back to your room and find your luggage already in your room. Your average person never gets to experience that kind of service, and now it's gone. Now, there's congestion pricing. Prices have gone up, and services have gone down.
Chapek, like so many other c-suite types, has no vision. Instead, he made things worse by trying to squeeze out a few more bucks to make Wall Street types happy. He's an idiot. He didn't understand the product. Instead, he was well on his way to turning Disney parks into a physical version of free app store games with a micro-transaction approach to what was already the singular most expensive vacation that most families will ever take.
Re:Surprise Ousting Soon? (Score:4, Interesting)
You and your family could pick slots for rides a month before
I don't know about everything you're bringing up here, but I do know about this one. This was a terrible system and getting rid of it was both positive and important. I can refer you to this [youtube.com] two hour long discussion of Disney's Fast Pass system, but the short version is that it benefited certain people who were either particularly rich or in-the-know, to the great detriment of everyone else.
Chapek was a parks guy, that was his division before becoming CEO, and most of the criticism directed against him was that parks was all he knew. That he didn't know the rest of the business well enough to handle the films and everything else.
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This sounds like the kind of hit piece that appeared a while before Disney axed Chapek out of nowhere
Last week a NY Times op-ed columnist wrote about her concern regarding Turner Classic Movies [nytimes.com].
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Re: Surprise Ousting Soon? (Score:2)
TCM was always scary (Score:2)
Re:You can't blame the new guy (Score:4, Informative)
All they're doing is following Fox News' model which has worked incredibly well for them. It's a terrible model for news of course but maximizing profit are these network's top concern.
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Airing a townhall with a presidential candidate is what news channels are supposed to do.
Yes, but they are not supposed to fill the "town hall" audience with a collection of MAGA nutjobs who cheer the notion of women being sexually assaulted.
The point of a Town Hall is to pass the audience members microphones and have them ask difficult questions of the person on stage, not have them cheer and clap like they're at a political rally.
King Midas in reverse (Score:5, Insightful)
He started by destroying Discovery, by turning it from an interesting channel with documentaries on history, dinosaurs, space, and other science areas into a cesspit of reality TV and "true crime". He has gutted HBO, and now people are surprised that he will destroy TCM?
Re:King Midas in reverse (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to love the Discovery Channel as a kid. The other day I turned to it while staying at a hotel (I haven't had cable in eons) and was appalled by the shows I saw being promoted. Anti intellectual to say the least. This guy should have been driven out of the TV business after that alone if he was the one responsible.
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Discovery, History, and TLC all died the same way. If these channels still existed as they did 25 years ago, I might still have cable.
I think gutting these channels was a mistake. No matter how retarded you make your TV shows, it will never be as retarded as what you find on YouTube, and it will never be as cheap to make.
TV shows should have went upmarket. The price certainly did, but the content didn't.
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The problem isn't that he made a business profitable... it's that he took a brand, destroyed the existing business, and built a new one.
This understandably is not considered a success by people who enjoyed the output of the original business. And it is definitely sad to see programming that required an IQ replaced by crap pandering to the lowest common denominator. There's already an endless supply of that.
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But there's the problem - a channel that is not profitable, even though it's airing "good programming"
Re: King Midas in reverse (Score:2)
Back when I had and watched TV. (Score:2)
You try to dictate business... (Score:2)
...without any discussion of the costs or profitability. Wow. Three Cheers for the Peanut Gallery!!!
(Crawl back into your hole. You're not up to the challenge of sustaining a business.)
HBOMax - Max?? (Score:3)
Losing "HBO" in HBO Max did seem like an incredibly stupid idea, given that HBO has finally reasserted its dominance over Netflix. HBO Max has returned to being the only big media company putting out mostly high quality content, while Netflix gave in to "the algorithm" years ago, destroying its ability to make good programming choices in favor of short term bean counting or political correctness.
And by that I mean Netflix's obsession with reality shows, endless preachy woke crap, and a seeming two season limit on anything actually good to avoid raising salaries.
I though "Max" was the name of Cinemax's service, or at least it really sounds like it should be. And I never even noticed the buried "TCM" menu on the new site!
doesn't matter (Score:3)
TCM doesn't matter, because we are all going to be killed by global warming any minute now.
Why I love TCM (Score:2)
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I USED to love TCM because they showed classic movies. Real classic movies, i.e. mostly black and white, pre-1965 movies. They barely show those now, trading them up for mostly post-1970 color blockbusters, the kind of stuff you can see on Netfilx or other streaming sites. TCM was unique because it was exclusively a library of really old movies, the kind that HBO, etc, don't carry. I dropped them when Mankiewicz took the helm because it was obvious he was going to tune the playlist to his tastes. The atmos
Media bias (Score:1)
Trump on CNN (Score:2)
"CNN took a rare ratings victory in prime time Wednesday night, with the networkâ(TM)s town hall featuring former President Donald Trump"
This was a smart move for them, as a business.
I saw a schedule for TCM the other day. (Score:2)
It was full of movies that came out while I was a kid. These were movies in color from the 1970s. I had to do a double take "How the hell are these Classic movies??"
I felt the same way I had the first time I heard a song I grew up with played on the "classic rock" station.
In other news David Zaslav's is a fag and destroys everything he touches. He's into lowest common denominator reality shit that doesn't have residual royalty obligations.
Criterion channel (Score:2)