TCM is one of the few cable channels that remains true to its original purpose. The "old movies channel" still shows old movies in an era where the "sports channel" is filled with sports-themed cable news style yelling matches, the "music channel" is almost all crappy reality TV shows, the "history channel" is filled with stupid conspiracy theories and crappy reality TV shows, the "news channels" are filled with yelling matches and partisan propaganda and even the "cartoon channels" sometimes air programming that isn't appropriate for elementary school aged children.
The only other cable channel I can think of that remains as committed to its original purpose as TCM is C-SPAN which still airs neutral and non-partisan coverage of politics as it happens (which is usually more boring than watching paint dry but very useful whenever something big and important is actually happening). So it is not good news that Warner Bros management, fresh off destroying a bunch of works of art for a tax writeoff, is now turning its attention to TCM to "fix" a channel that isn't broken. We all know where that slippery slope ends if/when they decide TCM "needs to draw higher ratings to increase ad revenue": a weekly All Elite Wrestling program on TCM (not unprecedented given that NBC once aired a WWE program on the science fiction channel).
The History Channel getting gutted was so disappointing. I loved shows like Modern Marvels that'd do deep dives into the history of various everyday things.
Listen, I love having William Shatner on there, but for the love of God I wish the content of the show was even half-decent. I’m quite partial to cryptids and other such paranormal happenings, but the History Channel never gets it right.
Besides, given his space adventure both on TV and real life, it makes far more sense to have him talk of weird/mysterious/beautiful things in the Universe. Not a very general tale of Mothman.
Do you see this as a dumbing down/erosion of society, preferences changing between generations, or just everyone throwing poo at the wall to see what sticks?
The rise of reality and outrage shows in the last couple decades really dimmed my view on the public at large.
It's just weak willed management. Sure a reality show will outperform the history of the soda can.
If you run a "discovery channel" your task should be to maximize the performance of that niche, not just throw up your hands and decide to just show whatever performs well. I'm surprised they havent just started showing softcore porn. That'll probably get viewers too.
Hey no need to slander my reality TV shows. I know they’re dumb. I like them dumb. It’s just entertainment, and I don’t have to be invested in it like all the over-serious shows out there.
There's value in curation and scheduling. Let someone else wade through the ocean and make decisions for you. When it comes to passive entertainment, I prefer broadcast TV over streaming, because left to my own devices I just hit choice paralysis and put Futurama on.
Honestly, the competition shows on Food Network are good fun. I would gladly welcome more of that format. Guy's Grocery Games is the only show I bother watching on there now. It's blissfully lighthearted enough to be a good distraction, and it's got no sleaze whatsoever.
This is unfortunate, it was actually TCM that introduced me to some more obscure films I’m really passionate about from Studio Ghibli which are now some of my favorite most-cherished animated films.
What set TCM apart were the interludes where the host explains the background of how the stories came about, where the directors were in their careers when the film was made. Just really insightful stuff.
I’m still shocked they renamed HBO max. HBO has to be one of the strongest premium brand names around. There’s clearly something wrong going on in the organization. Perhaps it’s a debt issue after the merger with discovery.
I will not condone the people making the decision. Zaslav is a hat full of holes and surrounds himself with yes men. I will also not condone the choice of Max. I would just have called the thing Warner Plus. But I will 100% defend the decision to drop HBO from the name.
HBO has always stood for premium entertainment for adults. There are other sides to the brand, for example children's programming. Ultimately premium programming is the biggest pull of HBO, not the other stuff. By naming the streaming service meant to convey the whole of Warner Bros. catalogue, and now on top of that Discovery as well, is a mistake. It enlarges the brand too much, too quickly. It puts under the umbrella of HBO things that people do not associate with HBO. Porky Pig cartoons don't fit under HBO. Discovery's wall of cheap reality TV even less.
A counter-argument is Disney. Disney+ includes a ton of things that are traditionally not associated with the brand. But I say that it no longer applies. Disney has successfully enlarged their branding, you just haven't fully realized it yet. That larger umbrella for the company was built over two decades, and cost billions. It was built on the back of Marvel and Lucasfilm. HBO is not there yet.
I don’t really agree with the article. TCM was a wonderful thing as it was conceived but the times have changed a lot since then.
Its main viewership is dying. Not to overuse the word “literally,” but, literally dying.
Live cable is basically the worst way to watch a movie I you can imagine at this point. I love all the kind words about curation but hello have you ever heard of the Internet? There is no shortage of sources of movie curation all better than anything a mass-market cable channel can offer.
I think ultimately TCM needs to be reallocated into something that fits live cable better, possibly not even related to movies. Longer term, I don’t think most cable stations will exist at all. They will be content portals for the various media conglomerates like we see on streaming sites. I think that cable service as we understand it now will essentially be shut down. Just look at the free “cable” services out there like Pluto. They’re all pseudo-channels pieced together with a grab bag of content.
I’ve also got a bit of an unpopular opinion here: the Max rebrand makes a ton of sense. Why? Because the “HBO” Brand is associated with adult shows, i.e., R-rated content. This is a problem. Did you know Max is the streaming home of Sesame Street? Yeah, that used to have the HBO brand on it.
HBO Max got to the point where most of its content isn’t even from HBO. Making the streaming service a separate brand from the content sources makes perfect sense.
We used to use our DVR to record things from Turner Classic Movies. Not just sitting around watching the channel, but we used it to gather things up, although sometimes we watched things on it live too. It was about as good as owning the movie in DVD or Blu-ray and we could watch it anytime we wanted, for years and years, when recorded on DVR. Then along came 4k and the new 4k-enabled cable box deletes our recorded movies after 365 days, even if space is not required. Screw you, Comcast.
So instead of buying/renting movies directly on a digital service, you subscribe(d) to a cable service that costs probably $60-100/month, wait for the movie you want to be played on a schedule and be recorded to a DVR hard drive in your house, and then you watch the movie along with content and aspect ratio edits, reduced bitrate, and a channel watermark.
I can’t understand how you you tolerate or prefer this setup, whether it be now or in the past.
What specifically has gone wrong with TCM? The icon on Max is too small? CNN is bad? But if you tune your tv to TCM, as you've always done, has anything changed?
As a kid, anytime my dad was watching tv, he was watching TCM. I've learned there were a lot more remakes of old movies than I realized, and was always told, the original is much better--aside from the black and white, which I quickly got over, that's mostly held true.
The only other cable channel I can think of that remains as committed to its original purpose as TCM is C-SPAN which still airs neutral and non-partisan coverage of politics as it happens (which is usually more boring than watching paint dry but very useful whenever something big and important is actually happening). So it is not good news that Warner Bros management, fresh off destroying a bunch of works of art for a tax writeoff, is now turning its attention to TCM to "fix" a channel that isn't broken. We all know where that slippery slope ends if/when they decide TCM "needs to draw higher ratings to increase ad revenue": a weekly All Elite Wrestling program on TCM (not unprecedented given that NBC once aired a WWE program on the science fiction channel).