TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES NEWS

[txfilmfan]

good news re: Tabesh

Yes, and, if true, the budget increase for programming.

But would you trust the guys at the top? WB has been suffering from bad management with their corporate overlords - first with AT&T and now Discovery.

[Feinberg]

I just got an email from Virgin in the UK to say that TCM has been cancelled there.
This had been announced earlier as someone previously reported.

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[CinemaInternational]

If THE FLASH doesn't kill off TCM, then Warners upcoming stinker BARBIE will.

It does seem as though WB has slightly moved away from completely gutting the channel, at least for now. The new Barbie film does not look good, but there is enough hype that it will probably fare OK, however WB's flop-seeming August comic book film Blue Beetle seems like the main hurdle for TCM to pass.

[laffite]

The very idea of losing TCM is preposterous. It is an integral part of history of movies. Without TCM these films they would be forced down a rabbit hole. If it happens, there should be a National Day of Mourning. It is a part of our civilization. If it should go I will howl and you will hear me where ever you may be. If there were no Johan Sebastian Bach, so important to the beginning and consequent evolution of music and without which music would not be what it is today, so say with the Golden Age of film. It is a contextual imperative for the enjoyment and the history of film and must continue being in the public eye. So there!

If I were Elon Musk I would buy the damn channel myself.

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Want to suffer Hollywood’s wrath? Mess with TCM, you dirty rats!
Few things are sacrosanct in streaming TV’s chaotic revolution. But as Warner Bros. Discovery’s top exec recently learned, Turner Classic Movies is still zealously protected.

"....It’s possible that bottom-liners see TCM as simply a catalogue of movies, rather than what it is: a cultural institution far outpunching its weight class, one so beloved that it has created a community — online and in real life — that stretches to the upper echelons of Hollywood.

The outcry from the Hollywood elite was therefore swift. “Turner Classic Movies has been a fixture in my life for as long as I can remember. It’s a holy corner of film history — and a living, breathing library for an entire art form. ...

....“It’s a free film education,” said actress J. Smith-Cameron, most recently known for playing Gerri on HBO’s “Succession.”

“The curation is fantastic,” said her husband, Kenneth Lonergan, the playwright and Oscar-winning filmmaker behind such films as “Manchester by the Sea.” “They don’t just show the old movies. They talk about the whole culture of the movie, the impact it had, how it related to other films, how it related to other things that were going on in society.”

Through that curation — and a number of savvy business moves — the small channel became highly revered. .....

“It has really opened a huge community for people who love classic movies to connect to each other,” he said. “But maybe more important than that, I’ve heard countless stories over the years from people who feel TCM has saved them as they battled illness or grief or trauma of some sort in their lives. They turn on TCM, and it’s a balm.”......

“It’s our immediate cultural heritage,” Lonergan added. Asking why these old movies matter is “like asking, ‘Why do you preserve paintings?’ or, ‘Why do you preserve music from 20 years ago or 50 years ago or 40 years ago or 100 years ago?’ Nobody says, ‘Why is it important to have jazz?’”......

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-ent ... 5pPQQliXzU

[NotAnAnimal!!]

If they end up killing TCM and thereby squander their collection, I'm sure I can count on you all to respectfully complain to your congressmen that copyright lasts far too long. Can't wait till all the TCM interstitials are replaced with this on repeat:

[TikiSoo]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-ent ... taff-cuts/

Maybe TCM will turn into a streaming channel that you simply subscribe to like the Criterion Channel. What's Disney, $20/month? I think most would gladly spend $250/year for TCM as long as it remained WITHOUT COMMERCIAL INTERRUPTION as movies should be.

This is very close to the "a la carte" option we always complained we wanted from cable, which cost us well over $250/year just to get TCM.

The only downside is many older people who would enjoy it far more than anyone, would be left out because they don't understand streaming. I could never set up my 90+ y/o Mom with another video navigation tool.

[dianedebuda]

I suspect there'd be many like me who've already recorded most of the movies that I'm interested in from the channel and now rarely even watch TCM. Guess I'd seen the handwriting on the wall more than a decade ago. There just aren't enough new things shown there that I'm interested in enough to justify a streaming cost. And so many of the intros/outros are repeated material or woke so they're not a draw either. I have serious doubts that TCM as a solo streaming service would be successful.

[jimimac71]

TikiSoo ... Disney Plus is $20/month, commercial free, but includes Hulu without commercials and ESPN+.
Otherwise, Disney+ without ads is $11/month.
To this day, we still don't really have a la carte.
The Washington Post won't let me read the article.
My Mom is 88 and has enough trouble with the cable remote.
Diane ... You must have a dedicated DVR, like Tivo. I have cloud DVR with Xfinity and nothing is permanent. Storage is a year at best and I pay for about 150 hours of storage.
I read recently in articles on this forum, it was AT&T who killed off FilmStruck. I didn't know AT&T was part of the equation at the time.
If the Criterion Channel can survive, why can't TCM?
Another idea hits me. We have Discovery+, which has channels from Discovery. Still very affordable, even without commercials.
We do not have a similar service with the original Turner channels or anything else not in Discovery+.
If TCM may not be able to run as a streaming channel by itself, include TBS and TNT, CNN and Headline News.
I also read where TCM is involved with film restoration.
So think of paying for TCM as you might for PBS Passport. You aren't paying just to watch PBS, but donating to a good cause.
That would apply to TCM. I think Criterion is a similar situation.

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GQ pulls article slamming Warner Bros. Discovery CEO Zaslav after complaint

The writer said he asked to have his byline removed after GQ made extensive changes after publication. The magazine removed the story instead.

".....Archived versions of the original and edited versions of the article show significant changes that had the effect of softening its tone. A line calling Zaslav “the most hated man in Hollywood” was deleted. The “Succession” comparison was removed, as was a segment where Bailey called the reality shows that Zaslav oversaw while running Discovery “reality slop.”

The final paragraphs of the original article compared Zaslav to the pitiless businessman played by Richard Gere in “Pretty Woman,” with Bailey writing that the executive is “only good at breaking things.”

...A Zaslav spokesman complained to GQ about the story soon after it was published, ..

The ending of the edited article was much kinder to Zaslav, removing the “Pretty Woman” reference and simply noting that film aficionados’ complaints have “gotten personal.”.......
Bailey told The Washington Post that, after GQ made the changes, he asked editors to remove his byline.
He said an editor told him that GQ would not keep an article on its website without the author’s name. By Monday afternoon, the article was removed entirely from the site.......
Bailey said his editors at GQ never told him the piece was inaccurate, and the edited version of the article did not contain a correction.

“I think a side-by-side comparison of the piece before and after GQ’s internal edits reveals exactly what WBD wanted changed, and that GQ was happy to do so,” Bailey wrote in an email to The Post.
.....GQ has a corporate connection to Warner Bros. Discovery. The magazine’s parent company, Condé Nast, is owned by Advance Publications, a major shareholder in Warner Bros. Discovery. Advance Publications did not respond to a request for comment...."

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[dianedebuda]

Diane ... You must have a dedicated DVR, like Tivo.

No DVR. I use(d) a capture device that records component output to my hard disk. Personal use only. Haven't yet moved to the hdmi era.

[jimimac71]

On my Diane. We had a 27 inch CRT TV until about 2015. It pretty much went poof.
The recycle guys took it away, all 80+ pounds. We used a baby 20 inch until getting a new flat screen. Before the 27 inch, a really old TV with nothing more than a coax connector.
Got a DVR player and had to get a video to RF adapter box from Radio Shack.
Our TV has the various connectors, but the cable box and Blu-ray are only HDMI.
Some believe our 8 year old TV is getting long in the tooth.
Now TVs are loaded with things and I have no idea what they mean.
I remember when you attached the cable TV using a transformer.
In other words, the 2 VHF screws on the back of the TV.
Yeah, I'm an old -timer who had to warm up the old Zenith tube TV.
(That could make you feel better)