https://apnews.com/7341e075894d4a75b5affc0b4fba1a31
25 years later, TCM still abides (so movie lovers pray)
By JAKE COYLE yesterday
This image released by Turner Classic Movies shows Clark Gable, left, and Vivien Leigh in a scene from "Gone with the Wind." On Thursday, the TCM Classic Film Festival will open its 10th annual edition in Los Angeles with “When Harry Met Sally...” To mark its anniversary, TCM will on Sunday again air “Gone With the Wind,” the film that it first transmitted on April 14, 1994. (Turner Classic Movies via AP)
NEW YORK (AP) — There is always an asteroid, real or imagined, bearing down on Turner Classic Movies .
Fears that something might befall the commercial-less bastion of classic Hollywood films aren’t always justified. But there’s an instinctual understanding that keeping anything good and pure alive in this dark, dark world is against the odds. By now, the hosts and executives of TCM are quite accustomed to fretful, agitated fans coming to them for reassurance that, yes, Turner Classic is OK, and, no, commercials aren’t coming.
“I’ve had the good fortune to get to know Paul Thomas Anderson a little bit and let me just put it this way: He never asks how I’M doing,” says Ben Mankiewicz, who in 2003 became only the second TCM host after Robert Osborne.
Almost everything in cable television and film has changed since Ted Turner launched the network in 1994. But through endless technological upheavals, four U.S. presidents and three Spider-men, Turner Classic humbly, persistently, improbably abides. On Sunday, TCM will turn 25, celebrating a quarter of a century as a lighthouse of classic cinema; a never-stopping, flickering beacon of Buster Keaton and Doris Day, Barbara Stanwyck and Ernst Lubitsch.
“We view ourselves as the keeper of the flame,” says Jennifer Dorian, general manager of TCM. “We’re stronger than ever.”
That will be good news to the TCM fans whose heart rates quickened after AT&T’s takeover of Time Warner, which had bought Turner Broadcasting back in 1996. That led to restructuring, announced last month, that placed TCM in WarnerMedia’s “global kids and young adults” subdivision, along with Cartoon Network and Adult Swim. WarnerMedia also shut down TCM’s nascent streaming service, FilmStruck , last November after deeming it a “niche service.” WarnerMedia is to launch a larger streaming platform later this year.
The demise of FilmStruck prompted an outcry from the likes of Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan who petitioned WarnerMedia for its preservation. Some of the biggest names in Hollywood had TCM’s back. One privately told Mankiewicz: “If you think we’re mad about FilmStruck, wait ’til you see what we do if anyone messes with the network.”
Yet the shuttering of FilmStruck (its streaming partner, Criterion Collection , relaunched as a stand-alone service on Monday) reinforced concerns that amid all the juggling and bundling of merging conglomerates, TCM might slip through the digital cracks.
“The fact that there are really passionate, vocal people out there helps us sort of stay the course. I think our corporate bosses don’t want to upset those people,” says Charlie Tabesh, TCM’s programming chief and a 21-year veteran at the network. “While you can never promise anything, I’ve been through it enough that I’d be surprised if they changed it.”
Change can be a dirty word around TCM. “Lower case ‘c,’ please,” says Mankiewicz. “Evolve” is more preferable. TCM is, after all, a place where time nearly stops. In the 25 years since its founding, its focus remains overwhelmingly the golden age of Hollywood. Movies from the ’30s, ‘40s and ’50s, Tabesh says, make up approximately 70 percent of its programming.
“That’s our bread and butter,” says Mankiewicz. “Who doesn’t like bread and butter?”
To mark its 25th anniversary, TCM will on Sunday again air “Gone With the Wind,” the film that it first transmitted on April 14, 1994. Since then, the 1939 epic has aired more than 60 times on the network. The 10th annual TCM Classic Film Festival also kicks off Thursday in Los Angeles with “When Harry Met Sally...”
Fans of Turner Classic are as varied as Martha Stewart, Evander Holyfield, Alex Trebek and Kermit the Frog — all of whom have been guest programmers. Scorsese famously keeps it playing in his editing suite. Keith Richards is rumored to be a devotee. Even Donald Trump once stopped by to talk about, among other titles, “Citizen Kane.” ″Although I’m not sure he’d actually watched the movies he talked about, to be honest,” says Tabesh.
Contemporary films have made only hesitant, much-considered inroads. (The newest films to air on TCM are “Hugo” and “The Artist,” both from 2011.) More international films have slowly, cautiously been added, too. Over the years, TCM has expanded well beyond the Turner library (some 4,700 films from MGM, RKO and pre-1950 Warner Bros.) via deals with virtually every studio.
Dorian views coming under Warner control as a homecoming.
“We’re moving closer to the library. We’re going to a part of the company that’s steeped in film history and values the cultural heritage of film,” says Dorian. “We absolutely intend to still be multi-studio.”
By rigorously staying true to itself, the cult of TCM has grown over the years. The network’s sixth cruise is to set sail in October. There is also a TCM Wine Club and a fan club, TCM Backlot. To celebrate its 25th anniversary, 25 fans will get to introduce a film with Mankiewicz. Turner Classic will also pay further homage to Osbourne, who for most of its history was its friendly, welcoming face. He died in 2017 after 62,851 appearances on the network.
New hosts have joined, including Eddie Muller, Dave Karger and Alicia Malone, a film writer and podcaster who grew up in Australia dreaming of being Marilyn Monroe. She has been proud to remind viewers of women’s place in film history on TCM, which, she notes, is programmed by people, not algorithms.
“I felt like I found my tribe,” Malone says of coming to the network last year. “This is part of preserving film history. What TCM does best is tell these stories.”
Yet asteroid or not, there’s an unmistakable whiff of that “c″ word in the air. “Obviously, we feel a sea change coming,” says Mankiewicz. WarnerMedia declined to comment for this article, but Dorian said the message from above so far is only supportive.
“The large stroke is they want us to keep doing what we’re doing,” says Dorian.
As far as TCM’s place in the rapidly changing streaming world, Dorian says that’s “TBD.” ″There’s a world of opportunity in front of us with streaming. I do not know the right approach for TCM at this moment,” she says. “At our company, we’re developing our new plan right now.”
But predicting the future isn’t TCM’s nature. For a network that has always fixed its eyes firmly on the past, the present moment is one to savor.
“It feels momentous. It feels like we really accomplished something. It’s a quarter of a century,” says Mankiewicz. “If you asked me what I’d like to be doing in another 25 years, I hope to be introducing movies on TCM, having debates about whether you should remake the ‘The Thin Man’ and listening to those who say, ‘You’re showing too many modern movies!’”
___
Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP
AP: 25 years later, TCM still abides (so movie lovers pray)
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Re: AP: 25 years later, TCM still abides (so movie lovers pray)
https://variety.com/2019/tv/features/tu ... 203183315/
How Turner Classic Movies Built a Marquee Brand by Catering to Film Fans
By Cynthia Littleton
Turner Classic Movies, the last cable channel launched by Ted Turner as an independent media mogul, is hitting its silver on-air anniversary this month. But the TCM brand is well positioned to enter a golden age as the tide turns in the marketplace for cable TV channels.
TCM has spent 25 years building up a community of film fanatics who love the channel itself, not just the movies it screens. The Turner Classic Movies seal of approval draws thousands of attendees annually to the TCM Classic Film Festival, which kicks off its 10th edition in Los Angeles this week, and to TCM-branded screenings in theaters around the country.
Since 2011, TCM has offered film-focused cruises in partnership with Disney and other luxury ship operators. Three years ago, it launched an official fan club — the Backlot — that now has 34 chapters, creating a grassroots network for local promotions such as the “TCM in Your Hometown” contest events.
Variety Print
Subscribe Today
The channel’s vibrant profile and dominance of the classic movie category makes it a must-have in a skinny-bundle world. That parent company WarnerMedia owns most (but not all) of the titles that unspool on the channel is fuel for the conglom’s plans to launch a broad-based streaming platform.
“TCM is a brand, not just a TV network,” says Jennifer Dorian, exec VP and general manager of TCM. “Much of our future growth will come from fan engagement initiatives.”
TCM’s 25th birthday arrives April 14, just a month after the Atlanta-based operation made a significant shift amid a broader shake-up of AT&T’s management of WarnerMedia properties. Oversight of TCM has shifted from Turner, which has largely been dismantled, to Warner Bros. For TCM, a closer alignment with the Warner Bros. shield that graces so many of its movies is a natural fit. After all, Warners is home to TCM’s most-screened movie to date — 1942’s “Casablanca” — with 150 runs and counting.
“We’re really energized by the new structure,” Dorian says. “Being in the Warner Bros. fold will put us closer to the movies and to creative ideas. There are new opportunities for fans, for consumer products that will really add to our business.”
TCM has a gold-plated brand because it was designed to appeal to movie devotees rather than a mass audience. The decision was made early on to keep it commercial-free, and the mantra of “no edits and no interruptions” has held firm through successive regimes at Turner, and now Warner Bros.
“Context and curation is what we’re known for,” says Charlie Tabesh, senior VP of programming for Turner Classic Movies. “We’ve never programmed the channel with ratings in mind. If we did, we wouldn’t be playing silent films or 1930s black-and-white movies.”
The decision to keep TCM commercial-free had financial consequences, but the executive team that developed the channel — authorized by a vote of Turner Broadcasting System’s board of directors on June 4, 1993 — knew it would be more valuable in the long run to cater to its core audience. Cable operators agreed. It didn’t hurt in the push to launch TCM that Turner at the time counted Time Warner Cable, Comcast and John Malone’s Tele-Communications Inc. among its sizable equity investors. (Time Warner swallowed up all of Turner in September 1996.)
A movie channel for Turner was a no-brainer given founder Ted Turner’s prescient move in the mid-1980s to acquire the pre-1948 MGM library, the early RKO library and broad rights to Warner Bros.’ golden age films. With that vault, the Turner team knew it would not be hard to best the primary competition, Cablevision’s American Movie Classics.
“This was not going to be a channel to celebrate old Hollywood,” says Brad Siegel, who headed Turner’s entertainment arm at the time TCM was conceived. “We wanted it to be something completely unique, like a magazine that was a smart read for people who love film.” TCM from the get-go has also shelled out to license movies from other studios and sources. “We wanted to lay claim to offering the best mix of classic movies — with a definition of ‘classic’ as something that was really good, not by a chronological time period,” Siegel says. “To do that we had to have more than just the movies we owned.”
Robert Osborne was Siegel’s first choice to be the face of TCM as its principal host. Siegel had tried to hire Osborne a few years before when Siegel was working at AMC, but his recruiting effort was blocked by a management turf war. Osborne, a former actor turned columnist and Hollywood historian, set the perfect tone for TCM. He remained with the channel until he retired in 2016, the year before he died, at age 84.
“We put together a team of people who lived, ate and breathed classic movies,” Siegel says. “Robert was a definitive expert on classic movies.”
Osborne and Ted Turner did the honors in Times Square when the network held its launch event, complete with an oversize switch to pull when the channel went live at 7:10 p.m. ET. The April 14, 1994, date was timed to sync with the 100th anniversary of the first commercial exhibition of a motion picture in the U.S. — a nickelodeon theater in Times Square playing a Thomas Edison-produced Kinetoscope production.
Osborne launched the channel with a three-minute introduction, explaining TCM’s mission to present “the finest films ever made, 24 hours a day.” A nine-minute Chuck Workman documentary titled “100 Years at the Movies” played, followed by “Gone With the Wind.”
Writer-producer Ben Mankiewicz was only the second person to serve as TCM host when he signed on with the channel in 2003. He’s now the main primetime host, although he shares duties with Dave Karger and Alicia Malone. Mankiewicz credits Osborne’s style — a mix of scholarly knowledge and a fan’s enthusiasm for obscure gems and long-forgotten shorts — for allowing TCM to establish a “meaningful connection” with viewers.
“Context and curation is what we’re known for. We’ve never programmed the channel with ratings in mind. If we did, we wouldn’t be playing silent films or 1930s black-and-white movies.”
Charlie Tabesh
“It’s the only fan-driven network like this on television,” says Mankiewicz, who brings a Hollywood pedigree as part of the Mankiewicz clan of writers. (His grandfather, Herman Mankiewicz, wrote “Citizen Kane.”) “It is so satisfying to be part of that connection,” Mankiewicz says. “I’ve had discussions with some of the biggest artists in this business, who tell me that the channel is always on somewhere in their house.”
The TCM vault is stocked with so many thousands of titles and obscurities that even 25 years later, “detective work” is still required to keep on top of everything there is to offer, according to Tabesh. To wit, eight 1930s titles from the RKO days recently surfaced that have never played on the channel. To Tabesh, that’s a big score.
“Even when you think you’ve gone through everything, you start finding things,” he says.
One of the biggest challenges in recent years has been grappling with the march of time and changing cultural attitudes and social norms. There are plenty of films with material that is viewed through a contemporary lens as at worst offensive or unenlightened. Notable examples are the depiction of slavery in “Gone With the Wind” and the use of blackface in films of the 1920s and ’30s.
TCM has sought to tackle some of these issues with its original documentary series and themed programming initiatives such as the “Race and Hollywood” series presented by African-American film historian Donald Bogle. As a mirror of the times in which they were made, movies offer a kind of road map to how attitudes evolve.
D.W. Griffith’s 1915 epic “The Birth of a Nation” is a landmark film, but it presents a horrifyingly racist view of African-American life in the post-Civil War era. TCM runs “The Birth of a Nation” and movies with similar backgrounds, but only with appropriate introduction, context and, when necessary, warnings to viewers.
“We don’t want to deny history. We don’t want to pretend that certain movies were never made,” Tabesh says. “We want to educate.”
Mankiewicz says considerations about how to handle problematic material, particularly in important works like “Gone With the Wind,” are part and parcel of the mandate to help audiences’ frame their viewing experience.
“We care about putting these movies in the context of their times. We tell you that this would never get made in 2019,” Mankiewicz says. “This is when the job is most challenging and most exciting.”
How Turner Classic Movies Built a Marquee Brand by Catering to Film Fans
By Cynthia Littleton
Turner Classic Movies, the last cable channel launched by Ted Turner as an independent media mogul, is hitting its silver on-air anniversary this month. But the TCM brand is well positioned to enter a golden age as the tide turns in the marketplace for cable TV channels.
TCM has spent 25 years building up a community of film fanatics who love the channel itself, not just the movies it screens. The Turner Classic Movies seal of approval draws thousands of attendees annually to the TCM Classic Film Festival, which kicks off its 10th edition in Los Angeles this week, and to TCM-branded screenings in theaters around the country.
Since 2011, TCM has offered film-focused cruises in partnership with Disney and other luxury ship operators. Three years ago, it launched an official fan club — the Backlot — that now has 34 chapters, creating a grassroots network for local promotions such as the “TCM in Your Hometown” contest events.
Variety Print
Subscribe Today
The channel’s vibrant profile and dominance of the classic movie category makes it a must-have in a skinny-bundle world. That parent company WarnerMedia owns most (but not all) of the titles that unspool on the channel is fuel for the conglom’s plans to launch a broad-based streaming platform.
“TCM is a brand, not just a TV network,” says Jennifer Dorian, exec VP and general manager of TCM. “Much of our future growth will come from fan engagement initiatives.”
TCM’s 25th birthday arrives April 14, just a month after the Atlanta-based operation made a significant shift amid a broader shake-up of AT&T’s management of WarnerMedia properties. Oversight of TCM has shifted from Turner, which has largely been dismantled, to Warner Bros. For TCM, a closer alignment with the Warner Bros. shield that graces so many of its movies is a natural fit. After all, Warners is home to TCM’s most-screened movie to date — 1942’s “Casablanca” — with 150 runs and counting.
“We’re really energized by the new structure,” Dorian says. “Being in the Warner Bros. fold will put us closer to the movies and to creative ideas. There are new opportunities for fans, for consumer products that will really add to our business.”
TCM has a gold-plated brand because it was designed to appeal to movie devotees rather than a mass audience. The decision was made early on to keep it commercial-free, and the mantra of “no edits and no interruptions” has held firm through successive regimes at Turner, and now Warner Bros.
“Context and curation is what we’re known for,” says Charlie Tabesh, senior VP of programming for Turner Classic Movies. “We’ve never programmed the channel with ratings in mind. If we did, we wouldn’t be playing silent films or 1930s black-and-white movies.”
The decision to keep TCM commercial-free had financial consequences, but the executive team that developed the channel — authorized by a vote of Turner Broadcasting System’s board of directors on June 4, 1993 — knew it would be more valuable in the long run to cater to its core audience. Cable operators agreed. It didn’t hurt in the push to launch TCM that Turner at the time counted Time Warner Cable, Comcast and John Malone’s Tele-Communications Inc. among its sizable equity investors. (Time Warner swallowed up all of Turner in September 1996.)
A movie channel for Turner was a no-brainer given founder Ted Turner’s prescient move in the mid-1980s to acquire the pre-1948 MGM library, the early RKO library and broad rights to Warner Bros.’ golden age films. With that vault, the Turner team knew it would not be hard to best the primary competition, Cablevision’s American Movie Classics.
“This was not going to be a channel to celebrate old Hollywood,” says Brad Siegel, who headed Turner’s entertainment arm at the time TCM was conceived. “We wanted it to be something completely unique, like a magazine that was a smart read for people who love film.” TCM from the get-go has also shelled out to license movies from other studios and sources. “We wanted to lay claim to offering the best mix of classic movies — with a definition of ‘classic’ as something that was really good, not by a chronological time period,” Siegel says. “To do that we had to have more than just the movies we owned.”
Robert Osborne was Siegel’s first choice to be the face of TCM as its principal host. Siegel had tried to hire Osborne a few years before when Siegel was working at AMC, but his recruiting effort was blocked by a management turf war. Osborne, a former actor turned columnist and Hollywood historian, set the perfect tone for TCM. He remained with the channel until he retired in 2016, the year before he died, at age 84.
“We put together a team of people who lived, ate and breathed classic movies,” Siegel says. “Robert was a definitive expert on classic movies.”
Osborne and Ted Turner did the honors in Times Square when the network held its launch event, complete with an oversize switch to pull when the channel went live at 7:10 p.m. ET. The April 14, 1994, date was timed to sync with the 100th anniversary of the first commercial exhibition of a motion picture in the U.S. — a nickelodeon theater in Times Square playing a Thomas Edison-produced Kinetoscope production.
Osborne launched the channel with a three-minute introduction, explaining TCM’s mission to present “the finest films ever made, 24 hours a day.” A nine-minute Chuck Workman documentary titled “100 Years at the Movies” played, followed by “Gone With the Wind.”
Writer-producer Ben Mankiewicz was only the second person to serve as TCM host when he signed on with the channel in 2003. He’s now the main primetime host, although he shares duties with Dave Karger and Alicia Malone. Mankiewicz credits Osborne’s style — a mix of scholarly knowledge and a fan’s enthusiasm for obscure gems and long-forgotten shorts — for allowing TCM to establish a “meaningful connection” with viewers.
“Context and curation is what we’re known for. We’ve never programmed the channel with ratings in mind. If we did, we wouldn’t be playing silent films or 1930s black-and-white movies.”
Charlie Tabesh
“It’s the only fan-driven network like this on television,” says Mankiewicz, who brings a Hollywood pedigree as part of the Mankiewicz clan of writers. (His grandfather, Herman Mankiewicz, wrote “Citizen Kane.”) “It is so satisfying to be part of that connection,” Mankiewicz says. “I’ve had discussions with some of the biggest artists in this business, who tell me that the channel is always on somewhere in their house.”
The TCM vault is stocked with so many thousands of titles and obscurities that even 25 years later, “detective work” is still required to keep on top of everything there is to offer, according to Tabesh. To wit, eight 1930s titles from the RKO days recently surfaced that have never played on the channel. To Tabesh, that’s a big score.
“Even when you think you’ve gone through everything, you start finding things,” he says.
One of the biggest challenges in recent years has been grappling with the march of time and changing cultural attitudes and social norms. There are plenty of films with material that is viewed through a contemporary lens as at worst offensive or unenlightened. Notable examples are the depiction of slavery in “Gone With the Wind” and the use of blackface in films of the 1920s and ’30s.
TCM has sought to tackle some of these issues with its original documentary series and themed programming initiatives such as the “Race and Hollywood” series presented by African-American film historian Donald Bogle. As a mirror of the times in which they were made, movies offer a kind of road map to how attitudes evolve.
D.W. Griffith’s 1915 epic “The Birth of a Nation” is a landmark film, but it presents a horrifyingly racist view of African-American life in the post-Civil War era. TCM runs “The Birth of a Nation” and movies with similar backgrounds, but only with appropriate introduction, context and, when necessary, warnings to viewers.
“We don’t want to deny history. We don’t want to pretend that certain movies were never made,” Tabesh says. “We want to educate.”
Mankiewicz says considerations about how to handle problematic material, particularly in important works like “Gone With the Wind,” are part and parcel of the mandate to help audiences’ frame their viewing experience.
“We care about putting these movies in the context of their times. We tell you that this would never get made in 2019,” Mankiewicz says. “This is when the job is most challenging and most exciting.”
Bruce Calvert
http://www.silentfilmstillarchive.com
http://www.silentfilmstillarchive.com
Re: AP: 25 years later, TCM still abides (so movie lovers pray)
Herald Square, not Times Square. And it was a vaudeville house, Koster & Bial, although I would need to double check that. However, I suppose accuracy in reporting show business news isn’t a priority with Variety.
Bob
Bob
The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.
— L.P. Hartley
— L.P. Hartley
Re: AP: 25 years later, TCM still abides (so movie lovers pray)
Blackface was still common in films of the 1940s.
Ed Lorusso
DVD Producer/Writer/Historian
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DVD Producer/Writer/Historian
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Re: AP: 25 years later, TCM still abides (so movie lovers pray)
While I am delighted that the channel looks secure (for now) I just wish TCM would fix its European version so we classic movie fans outside of America could enjoy this mouth-watering channel.
TCM Europe really sucks. I know it is all to do with copyrights and other legal issues but one would think this could be sorted out in 2019.
Think of the new audience figures this would create? It used to be great over here when TCM was called TNT. Nowadays it is shabby pale shadow of its US counterpart.
So come on TCM....make my day and relaunch in Europe!
TCM Europe really sucks. I know it is all to do with copyrights and other legal issues but one would think this could be sorted out in 2019.
Think of the new audience figures this would create? It used to be great over here when TCM was called TNT. Nowadays it is shabby pale shadow of its US counterpart.
So come on TCM....make my day and relaunch in Europe!
"Korngold has so much talent he could give half away and still have enough left for himself..." Giacomo Puccini (1921)
Re: AP: 25 years later, TCM still abides (so movie lovers pray)
=======
Like this clanger: "His grandfather, Herman Mankiewicz, wrote “Citizen Kane.” Right. And the earth is flat!
yer pal Dave
Re: AP: 25 years later, TCM still abides (so movie lovers pray)
The AP story is encouraging but I have have my doubts about a telecom company running a creative enterprise. only time will tell.
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Re: AP: 25 years later, TCM still abides (so movie lovers pray)
https://variety.com/2019/tv/features/tu ... 203183315/
The TCM vault is stocked with so many thousands of titles and obscurities that even 25 years later, “detective work” is still required to keep on top of everything there is to offer, according to Tabesh. To wit, eight 1930s titles from the RKO days recently surfaced that have never played on the channel. To Tabesh, that’s a big score.
[/quote]
Have those eight titles been listed anywhere?
Have they already run on TCM by now?
(Some of us old-timey, from-the-beginning TCM watchers rarely check their schedule anymore for pre-1950 titles -- unless someone on Nitrateville alerts us to a piece of welcome news such as this.)
The TCM vault is stocked with so many thousands of titles and obscurities that even 25 years later, “detective work” is still required to keep on top of everything there is to offer, according to Tabesh. To wit, eight 1930s titles from the RKO days recently surfaced that have never played on the channel. To Tabesh, that’s a big score.
[/quote]
Have those eight titles been listed anywhere?
Have they already run on TCM by now?
(Some of us old-timey, from-the-beginning TCM watchers rarely check their schedule anymore for pre-1950 titles -- unless someone on Nitrateville alerts us to a piece of welcome news such as this.)
If only our opinions were as variable as the pre-talkie cranking speed...