This week a tone deaf, corporate media power broker in charge of Warner Bros/Discovery decided to fire the entire upper management of Turner Classic Movies and fold the hugely popular network into its media empire.
To translate power broker actions into plain English that meant the plan was to squeeze the life out of a division with one of the most loyal audience bases around until it either disappears entirely or learns to coexist side by side with offerings like Dirty Jobs, Moonshiners and Naked and Afraid.
In other words, a platform where one can watch pristine classic films, learn film history from people who have spent their lives living and generally inspiring generations of younger artists worldwide through their work has as much value as a TV series where two naked people are dropped in the “wilderness” with a machete each week and we watch them survive in what is passed off as “real time.”
Hollywood doesn’t have loyalty to much but there is a very strong dedication by the people who actually make movies to preserve classic films and pass on their legacy to future generations.
That’s why even before the downsizing of TCM went viral, three A List directors – Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and Paul Thomas Anderson – had emergency meetings, separately and together, with said power broker, lobbying on behalf of the network.
Undoubtedly, there was also an implicit warning. Squeeze out the life of TCM in any substantial way, a brand that hasn’t ever made a fortune but has almost always made a bit of money, and risk alienating the bulk of the prestige film community.
This may not sound like much but after losing the one prestige level filmmaker in the WB stable – Christopher Nolan – to Universal for his latest picture, Oppenheimer, the powers that be have been reportedly anxious, nee desperate, to lure the likes of his talent back into the studio fold.
This is especially true since its latest hopes for a tent pole superhero film, The Flash, opened at disappointing box-office levels. Not to mention the fact that right after the big WB/Discovery merger it decided to not even release another big budget superhero venture, Batgirl. (Note: The bigwig determined it just wasn’t worth the trouble and marketing costs and that the $100+ million dollar tax write-off was far more appealing).
But back to TCM. Meaning, what is the result of all this?
Well, a few days ago a lot of carefully-worded press releases assured fans and industryites that there were conversations and separate and group phone calls all around where the filmmakers were assured that TCM would continue and the media exec denied there was EVER any plan to get rid of it to begin with.
Right.
The latter is at best sort of laughable when a classic film network has no one running it other than another corporate exec that oversees, um, WB/D’s Cartoon Network, as well as some other divisions.
Perhaps that’s why the PR solution to all of this was to several days later now give TCM to the two executives who run the film division at Warner Bros. Film Group – Michael DeLuca and Pamela Abdy.
I mean, what else do they have to do, right? Also, the guy who runs the Cartoon Network, as well as Discovery Family and Adult Swim and so many more, will still be in charge of TCM’s financial side. So, sure, nothing can go wrong and nothing at all will change.
Right????
Vote yes if you agree.
Of course, change is inevitable, especially in the entertainment industry. That would be a place where film studios, which include corporate streaming entities, are refusing to budge from their no change in negotiation status after a two-month plus writers strike.
The streamer plan is to keep their profit margins and revenues from the work generated by writers as secret as possible and to hold onto the right to do what they will with future artificial intelligence. If that means merely hiring writers for a few weeks to punch up some A.I. generated stories, so be it. Clearly, A.I. can do as well as Naked and Afraid, probably better.
Other producers/studios/corporate owners seem to be onboard with that plan, along with the idea of negotiating separately with each large union that makes their product in hopes of marginalizing writers, or any union for that matter, that stands in the way of what they consider progress.
Progress being the largest bottom line profits available for the smallest risks and largest rewards.
Bette Davis, David O. Selznick and Orson Welles must be turning over in their graves. Not that any one who holds the purse strings cares. Or thinks much about what and who came before them. Or, in some cases, even knows who they are.
If this sounds like The Chair is pissed off, yeah, you got that right. There is nothing wrong with reality TV or superhero movies except when they overrun the world and relegate everything and everyone else to sit in a corner.
Because when the latter two hog all of the daylight and attention – and funds – everything in that corner dies from malnourishment and lack of sunlight.
notes from a chair 