Since he took the helm of the newly merged Warner Bros. Discovery last year, the headlines about CEO David Zaslav have been relentlessly cringeworthy: He has been booed while giving a commencement speech, criticized for his massive salary, and mocked for seemingly out-of-touch business decisions. During strikes by actors and writers, his smooth visage became the face of corporate fat-cat indifference to the demands of Hollywood’s creative class.
But of all this year’s public relations snafus, perhaps the most revealing is a relatively low-profile fracas that happened in June. That’s when Warner Bros. Discovery announced that the entire executive leadership team of Turner Classic Movies was leaving the cable channel. The outcry was swift and brutal (“$100 million worth of bad press,” the marketing consultant Terry Press told the New York Times). Industry bigwigs denounced the move, and the directors Steven Spielberg, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Martin Scorsese urged Zaslav to save the channel.
TCM is a small but cherished institution within Hollywood. It’s where film buffs can view classics like Gone With the Wind followed by a cult film from the 1960s such as Blow-Up, interspersed with historical commentary from knowledgeable and beloved hosts. As a percentage of WBD’s total operating costs, it’s small potatoes, a lean operation run by a passionate staff that generates a modest profit. What’s more important is its cultural cachet and symbolic value. As the actor and producer Ryan Reynolds put it in a tweet, “It’s a holy corner of film history—and a living, breathing library for an entire art form. Please don’t fuck with @tcm.”
About a week after the initial cuts, WBD reversed course, bringing back a longtime TCM executive, with promises from Spielberg, Anderson, and Scorsese to curate content. The chatter died down, but the damage was done. The indelible impression
