Turner Classic Movies' five key executives have been laid off

[TMC]

https://twitter.com/themaureenlee/st...20004934107136

"This is an incredible loss of institutional knowledge."

TCM layoffs prompt an "emergency call"

Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson have organized an emergency call to David Zaslav.

[TMC]

TCM fans should be worried

Fans of the TCM (Turner Classic Movies) network are fretting after news that David Zaslav is making cuts to the division.

[Hawkee]

What I think will happen to Turner Classic Movies is that the channel will go broke but will be a streaming app and will give fans a chance to see classic movies on free trials and be a paying app but during the holidays they will offer free trials and then once the free trial is over fans will pay $30 to continue. But if TCM goes broke it will be a real shame because there really isn't competition for classic movie channels besides AMC. I think they will get new executives and give the channel a fresh look. Because there's lots of classic movie lovers and if TCM were to go broke it would be a sad day indeed

[Duster76]

When you look at the list of layoffs and the positions they held the handwriting is clearly on the wall. Let's take a look:

The laid-off employees include Pola Changnon, executive VP and general manager; Charles Tabesh, senior VP of programming and content strategy; Dexter Fedor, VP of brand creative and marketing; Genevieve McGillicuddy, VP of enterprises and strategic partnerships and TCM Film Festival director; and Anne Wilson, VP of studio production.

This is clearly the beginning of the end for TCM. TCM UK is shutting down on July 6th and I wouldn't be surprised to see TCM vanish within the next year. The network ratings are not good, according to Comcast in 2019 the average TCM viewer watched less than two movies a month. The network in fact is not ranked in the top 150 networks. Comcast moved the station off the basic tier to a sports and entertainment tier costing $9.95 a month. The only hope I see is flipping it to a diginet, but of course that means commercials, edited films and a much tighter programming format (meaning programming popular films that people are familiar with). I hope I'm wrong, but survival is going to be an uphill battle and realistically there is almost no chance that it remains recognizable to TCM fans.

[James28]

Should we also consider the matter of several well-known films on TCM still with their old all-uppercase closed-captioning while plenty of others have already changed to mixed-case? All the blame should be placed directly at Warner Bros., for neglecting to re-do the CC of their classic film library, and, by extension, most of the pre-1986 MGM film library. WB has gotten me too upset because of this. Any film shown on TCM with uppercase-only CC, I will just avoid like the plague.

Examples of non-WB/MGM films being shows on TCM will all-caps CC are The Seven-Year Itch (20th Century Fox); To Kill a Mockingbird (Universal); The Paper Chase (20th Century Fox); and Shampoo (Columbia). I'm especially mad about those.

Let's hope somebody at Warner Bros. Discovery is up to the task of re-doing the closed-captions for the ENTIRE classic WB/MGM film library, and set a target date of doing so before 2030.

[ponytail]

I watch TCM a lot. I hope it doesn't go off the air.

[TMC]

TCM staffers detail turmoil

That same day, TheWrap exclusively reported that the channel's top leadership had been laid off amid cuts of 100 staffers across Warner Bros.

[Duster76]

Originally Posted by TMC

TCM staffers detail turmoil

That same day, TheWrap exclusively reported that the channel's top leadership had been laid off amid cuts of 100 staffers across Warner Bros.

Interesting article, one thing that appears clear, TCM staff top to bottom has essentially been eviscerated. The business strategy will be coming from corporate and implementation of that strategy will not be debatable. Next time a directive comes from corporate to eliminate the outros, they will be eliminated. The changes will start showing up after September, I wouldn't be surprised to see commercials by the start of the year. The network will probably remain a bit more upscale than Movies!, but it will be more similar than different. The elaborate bumpers will disappear, the festivals are history, beginning this fall it will be movies without the extras.

It is estimated that by 2027 only 38% of the U.S. households will subscribe to cable, about the same number of households as 1989. In those days there were about 35 cable stations including over the air stations. Over the next few years we will see many of the networks disappear, networks like TV Land, VH1 and many others will vanish, regional sports networks will no longer be part of any basic/core package. I don't see a way forward for TCM, I think the films will be licensed to streaming services and diginets, but TCM has no place in an environment of two to three dozen survivors.

[Mario500]

"If you love film, you should be worried about what's going on at Turner Classic Movies" (article and audio)

[Hawkee]

What TCM should do to save themselves is create a spin-off channel called Classic Movie World and what Classic Movie World would show is classic movies from 1930-1989 and before the movies are shown various hosts would have an intro talking their own opinion on the movies going to be shown and it would be different genres in theme weekends like you would have Horse Crazy which would show different classic horse movies such as Misty to National Velvet Doris Day Weekend which would be all Doris Day's classic movies and Musical Madness which would showcase all musical films like Oklahoma and Mame and have movies like Citizen Kane and Casablanca and even show 80's favorites such as The Big Chill The Breakfast Club Indiana Jones movies and more action films of the 80's. And Classic Movie World would instantly become a hit . Because when you look at it when TCM was launched in 1994 the only competition movie channel for classic movies was AMC which was originally a classic movie channel at first but then focused on 80's and 90's movies. I think why TCM is slowly losing viewers and laying off people is because I think TCM wants to become like AMC and move to showing 80's and 90's movies and I mainly think they did this as a way to keep TCM alive

[Duster76]

Originally Posted by Hawkee

What TCM should do to save themselves is create a spin-off channel called Classic Movie World and what Classic Movie World would show is classic movies from 1930-1989 and before the movies are shown various hosts would have an intro talking their own opinion on the movies going to be shown and it would be different genres in theme weekends like you would have Horse Crazy which would show different classic horse movies such as Misty to National Velvet Doris Day Weekend which would be all Doris Day's classic movies and Musical Madness which would showcase all musical films like Oklahoma and Mame and have movies like Citizen Kane and Casablanca and even show 80's favorites such as The Big Chill The Breakfast Club Indiana Jones movies and more action films of the 80's. And Classic Movie World would instantly become a hit . Because when you look at it when TCM was launched in 1994 the only competition movie channel for classic movies was AMC which was originally a classic movie channel at first but then focused on 80's and 90's movies. I think why TCM is slowly losing viewers and laying off people is because I think TCM wants to become like AMC and move to showing 80's and 90's movies and I mainly think they did this as a way to keep TCM alive

"What TCM should do to save themselves is create a spin-off channel called Classic Movie World and what Classic Movie World would show is classic movies from 1930-1989 and before the movies are shown various hosts would have an intro talking their own opinion on the movies going to be shown and it would be different genres"

There's a network that does that already, it's called TCM!

The problem is this, the revenue model for TCM is based on fees received from cable operators. With all the cord cutting those fees are going to be less and less. Cable companies are going to be under pressure to hold prices especially true at the basic and basic + levels. TCM doesn't generate a large enough audience to justify carrying it, as the carriage agreements come up for renewal the cable companies will be looking for fee reductions or selling it as a premium channel. The only thing I can see them doing at this point are sponsorship agreements and cutting expenditures to the bone. The hosts slots will probably be consolidated, they may even be eliminated.

[TMC]

TCM temporarily eliminating outros

One plan, which will now be reversed, was to drop the two- to three-minute outro segments that run after a film airs with a wrap-up from the ...