Turner Classic Movies insiders detail the fight to protect the network in the wake of layoffs and why a TV station that is the torchbearer f
August 7, 2023
By Maureen Lee Lenker
(Entertainment Weekly) — We'll always have Paris, but for a time, it seemed as if we might not always have Turner Classic Movies.
Since 1994, TCM has aired films, uncut and commercial-free, 24 hours a day, all enhanced by monthly themed and curated programming, hosted introductions and conclusions (known as outros), conversations with filmmakers and talent, and original content. In its nearly 30 years of existence, the network has expanded beyond its already estimable remit as a cable network-meets-film-school, with fan events including a film festival and cruise.
The brand also plays a key role in global film preservation efforts. Restorations of bigger studio titles are typically done by the studios themselves, but TCM is more often than not the showcase for such work — both on air and at the annual film festival. TCM won a Peabody Award in 2008 for its "commitment to film preservation and restoration."
In 2023 alone, TCM partnered with the Film Foundation and the studio to restore 10 classics for the Warner Bros. 100th anniversary, including 1932's One Way Passage, 1941's The Strawberry Blonde, 1959's Rio Bravo, and 1955's East of Eden, all of which screened at the film festival and aired on the network. Last year, TCM celebrated its expanded partnership with the Film Foundation with the premiere of a 4K restoration of the Elizabeth Taylor/James Dean/Rock Hudson epic Giant at the 2022 festival. (Going even further back, in 2007, TCM tracked down the rights to six "lost" RKO films, including William Powell comedy Double Harness and Ginger Rogers rom-com Rafter Romance, not seen in over 50 years).
But on June 20, all of that seemed to be in peril as news broke that the entire executive leadership team of TCM (most of whom boasted 20-plus years of experience with the network) were being laid off alongside other members of the staff. The latest round of layoffs, which network staff tell EW they were blindsided by, are part of Warner Bros. Discovery's continuing attempts to cut costs across the studio.
Some backtracking from the executives at WBD is alright (especially in terms of staff rehires and bringing back the TCMFF Director), but they cut away at something that wasn't broken to begin with!
A merger put him in the driver’s seat at Warner Brothers, one of the industry’s biggest studios. It has been a wild ride.
November 15, 2023
By Jonathan Mahler, James B. Stewart, and Benjamin Mullin
(The New York Times Magazine) — It was April 2022, and David Zaslav had just closed the deal of a lifetime. From the helm of his relatively small and unglamorous cable company, Discovery, he had taken control of a sprawling entertainment conglomerate that included perhaps the most storied movie studio on the planet, Warner Brothers. The longtime New Yorker had always loved movies, and against the advice of several media peers, he had moved to Hollywood and taken over Jack Warner’s historic office, hauling the old mogul’s desk out of storage and topping it off with an old-time handset telephone. So far things were going great. He had met all the stars and players, was widely feted as the next in line to save the eternally struggling industry and was well into the process of renovating a landmark house in Beverly Hills. “You’re the dog that caught the bus,” the billionaire octogenarian cable pioneer John Malone, one of Discovery’s largest shareholders, told him. All he needed to do now was pay back the $56 billion in debt that he piled onto the new company to make the deal happen.
Money is never just lying around Hollywood, and the town was still reeling from the pandemic. But that was OK. Zaslav had set a “synergy target” — cost cuts, essentially — of $3 billion in the next two years, and now, with the clock ticking, he got to work. To help, he had brought along his chief financial officer from Discovery, an amateur pilot and former McKinsey consultant named Gunnar Wiedenfels. As spring turned to summer, they laid off hundreds of workers, shuttered or reorganized divisions and suspended or canceled hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of programming. Anything we don’t think is awesome, Zaslav told executives, stop production right now. Turn the cameras off.
Cuts are the norm after a merger, but Zaslav and Wiedenfels were pushing things hard, and in sometimes unorthodox directions. By shelving several nearly completed projects — including the animated, direct-to-streaming movie “Scoob!: Holiday Haunt,” and the fourth season of the postapocalyptic TV series “Snowpiercer” — they saved millions in postproduction and marketing costs, as well as residuals down the line, and they locked in hefty tax breaks up front. Like so much of what happened in Hollywood, all this was reminiscent of a Hollywood production — in this case, the beloved 1967 Mel Brooks comedy “The Producers.” There, the producers, Max Bialystock and Leopold Bloom, realized that under the right circumstances, a producer could make more money with a flop than a hit. For Zaslav and Wiedenfels, the money would come from making sure that no one would get to see the shows in the first place.
Then they came for “Batgirl.” The big-ticket streaming project had just finished filming in Scotland when Zaslav took over, and he and Wiedenfels had immediately identified it as a target — a “free ball,” as Zaslav described it to several colleagues. The audience test scores for a very early cut were not encouraging. Still, a number of executives warned him not to shelve it. “Batgirl” was a $90 million entry in a multibillion-dollar universe of movies and television shows based on DC Comics. Michael Keaton was reprising his role as Batman, and sequels were already in the works. Plenty of movies had tested poorly but still earned millions. Killing an all-but-completed movie would alienate the people Zaslav — or at least Hollywood — needed most: the people who made the movies. It was to no avail. On Aug. 2, the word came down: “Batgirl” was dead.
As predicted, the backlash was immediate and emotional. Stunned, the film’s up-and-coming directors, Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, tried to look at their footage, but their access to the production server was denied. The head of the DC unit, Walter Hamada, who was not consulted on the decision, asked to be released from his contract and would leave before the end of the year. Courtenay Valenti, one of the most respected development executives at Warner Brothers, was equally devastated and would be gone in a matter of weeks, ending a 33-year run at the studio. The news dominated the Hollywood trades for days. Under fire, Zaslav defended the decision in an earnings call with analysts, saying he shelved “Batgirl” to protect the DC brand. More quietly, Zaslav also sought cover in the authority of Bryan Lourd, the powerful co-chairman of Creative Artists Agency and a leading arbiter of Hollywood mores. As Zaslav told it to several associates, Lourd had supported the decision, observing that it wasn’t in the interest of C.A.A. clients, like the film’s star, Leslie Grace, to be associated with a bad movie. But a C.A.A. spokeswoman denied that. “Bryan Lourd was not consulted in advance of the studio’s move to cancel ‘Batgirl,’” she said.
At Discovery, producers referred to having their budgets slashed as “getting Gunnared,” and Wiedenfels maintains a hard-boiled, McKinsey-esque attitude toward the bottom line. “It’s hard work,” he says. “You don’t make friends.” Zaslav, a born salesman who would prefer to make friends, is more reflective. “You do sometimes get bloodied,” he said in a wide-ranging interview at Warner Brothers Discovery’s corporate headquarters in New York. But business is business. “We have made unpopular decisions because they were necessary.”
That joke about selling to Saudi Arabia in the end. Just... no.
No, the channel isn’t going away, but this week’s cuts will be felt by viewers.
June 22, 2023
By Josef Adalian
(Vulture) — It seems somehow appropriate that the company whose TV library includes Dallas is now being run by someone who often seems to be channeling the ghost of J.R. Ewing. Okay, maybe that’s not fair: J.R. was a villain audiences loved to hate, while many in Hollywood (at least those on social media) don’t feel any love at all toward Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav. That became clear again this week when the latest round of layoffs at WBD took out pretty much the entire senior leadership of Turner Classic Movies, one of the company’s most beloved brands.
Officially, nothing has changed about TCM’s on-air offering. There are no announced plans to shutter the network or to fire all the on-air hosts who film introductions. And Warner Bros. Discovery execs are still issuing memos saying how important the brand is to the company. “I want to assure you that we remain fully committed to this business, the TCM brand, and its purpose to protect and celebrate culture-defining movies,” Kathleen Finch, chief content officer for WBD’s U.S. TV networks group, told staffers at the company Tuesday in a note announcing the departure of TCM general manager Pola Changnon. Problem is, after a year of cost-cutting and brand-eroding moves by Zaslav during his first year in charge, it’s hard to believe Finch’s words will match reality as the full impact of this week’s firings is felt over the next few months.
For one thing, what Finch didn’t mention in her memo (which doubled as a press release for the showbiz trades) was that she hadn’t just parted ways with one senior exec. As The Wrap would later report (and other outlets confirm), WBD also let go TCM’s program chief, its head of production, its head of events, and its marketing chief. Or, as one industry insider I spoke to this week told me upon hearing the news, the folks who were fired are “the people who’ve been the architect of the brand for decades.”
Networks go through creative shuffles all the time, and it is possible for even the most storied of brands to survive a regime change. HBO, after all, has launched some of its biggest hits ever in the years since longtime boss Richard Plepler stepped down and Casey Bloys took over much of his role. But what’s happening at TCM isn’t just a changing of the guard. Instead, it feels a lot like what Zaslav has been doing with his company’s youth and animation brands (Cartoon Network, Adult Swim) or what Paramount Global execs have done with MTV and Comedy Central. It feels like the beginning of the end. As the industry vet lamented to me, “They’ve completely dismantled the networks so that they don’t have their own identity anymore. They had these passion brands they managed, which had rabid fan bases. It’s gone.”...
... In researching this story, I came across one more example of how WBD seems to be moving on from TCM, its words aside. Buffering has learned that there have been serious conversations at TCM in recent weeks about ending the practice of producing outros for its feature presentations as soon as next month. Introductions to movies wouldn’t be impacted, but the network would no longer regularly tape new segments to air following the conclusion of a film, according to three people familiar with the talks. The good news is that, apparently, that plan is no longer happening: A source familiar with the situation says that while the idea was discussed, there are no plans to move forward with the cutback.
TCM killing outros would have prompted loud howls of protest from the network’s many supporters, particularly given the backlash to this week’s layoffs, which was so intense, it resulted in Zaslav talking to directors Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson. After that meeting, the trio of directors released a statement Wednesday saying they were “heartened and encouraged by the conversations” they’ve had with the WBD chief. “We have each spent time talking to David, separately and together, and it’s clear that TCM and classic cinema are very important to him,” the statement said. “Our primary aim is to ensure that TCM’s programming is untouched and protected.”
I don't trust Zaslav's honeyed words to Spielberg, Scorsese, and P.T. Anderson. I just don't. He is going to hollow out the one place where so many of us learned almost everything we know about classic films. TCM is American cinephilia at its most inviting, accessible, expansive, and life-affirming best.
This has been a very tough week for me on the media front. As I’m sure some of my followers has noticed, there’s been a lot of #saveTCM posting going on this blog this week. I do have coherent thoughts about what’s been going on - and the possibility that the source of ~75% (if not more) of my knowledge about cinema is facing some very tough times ahead. But I will jot that down when I have the emotional capacity to do so. This blog does not exist without TCM.
And what a shame for Star Trek: Prodigy - maybe my favorite of the recent Trek shows. May they find a buyer for the second season (and perhaps an extension) soon.
From Turner Classic Movies’ Senior Director of Original Programming, Scott McGee. This is a statement of values that TCM drew up 20+ years ago and that McGee, in his tweet sharing this today, says will be continue to be upheld by those who work for TCM.
Do not let this national treasure be decimated or destroyed by WBD’s executives without a fight.
For those unable to read the text:
The Business
TCM is in the business of keeping classic movies alive. Our role is not only to share the wealth of classic movies, but also to preserve it, and create a new and growing audience. Our mission is to turn fans into zealots, casual viewers into fans, and newcomers into the classic movie lovers of the future.
The Aspiration
TCM is proud to play a unique role in American culture. We will defy categorization and advocate risk-taking as we meet the challenge of expanding the relevance of classic movies and transcending the limitations of television. TCM will be the leading source of new perspectives on classic movies.
The Experience
The TCM experience will express unconditional love of classic movies and provide unrivaled pleasure and satisfaction. TCM will always be fun, smart, cinematic and trend setting. TCM understands why we need movies, and the importance of classic movies as the intersection of entertainment, culture, and history. Our commercial-free programming and our unmistakable style produce a special and intimate dynamid with our audience, and a unique TCM state of mind.
The Bottom Line
TCM believes that movies matter. TCM is dedicated to the art of film, the values of movies and the intelligence of our audience. We accept the responsibility of advocating the art and commerce of classic movies. Without TCM, classic movies will die and with them, part of our culture. TCM is the guardian of classic movies, the keeper of a cultural flame.
