Turner Classic Movies Is a National Treasure

The gutting of Turner Classic Movies by its parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, is a grim omen for the future of the channel. Much of its leadership team was pushed out, including its respected lead programmer, Charlie Tabesh, who’d been there more than twenty-five years. The C.E.O. of Warner Bros. Discovery, David Zaslav, has said that he’s a viewer and fan of the channel, and the company offered assurances that the channel’s offerings will remain largely unchanged. (The layoffs are part of an over-all cost cutting at the parent company, and affected other channels, too.) A trio of movie directors who care deeply about TCM—Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Paul Thomas Anderson—talked with Zaslav to seek assurances that the channel will be maintained in its current form: a round-the-clock cinematheque centered on Hollywood movies from the nineteen-thirties to the eighties, along with silent films, international and independent films, and documentaries about the art and history of movies. The danger that TCM faces spotlights an enduring crisis in the field that the channel covers: the history of cinema.